If you want to see the most outrageous Volkswagen-based specials ever created, the annual Wörthersee Tour tuning festival is the place to be - and each year the skunk works at Wolfsburg come up with a couple of concepts that are just as wild as those of the top tuning houses.
What's special about them, of course, is that the factory concepts are almost always a way of gauging the public's reaction to a proposed new model - a way dipping your toe in the water without getting scalded, so to speak.
At this year's Wörthersee get-together, on from 8-11 May, the Wolfsburg Whitecoats will be showing a new Golf GTI concept - almost certainly the precursor of a new, hotter version of the original hot hatch.
Volkswagen research and development boss Dr Ulrich Hackenberg told the UK’s Car Magazine the concept would be quicker than the current GTI but a lot more realistic than the previous GTI concept, a 2007 flight of fancy with a mid-mounted Bentley W12 engine boasting 472kW and 750Nm that took it from 0-100 in 3.7 seconds an on to 325km/h.
As we said, outrageous.
But it's more likely that this 'realistic' concept will preview an upmarket special-edition Golf 40 GTI, to be released in 2015 (the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the Mk1 GTI in 1975).
Dr Hackenberg wouldn't give Car any details about the concept or, more specifically, its powertrain, but he did let slip one very important clue when he told the magazine that the electrically controlled limited-slip differential in the optional Power Pack for the Golf 7 GTI was capable of safely handling about 10 percent more power than it does now.
The current GTI is good for 169kW when ordered with the Performance Pack, so it would be realistic (Dr Hackenberg's word, not ours) to tweak the two-litre turbo engine up to about 185, trim out an upscale interior in black leather with contrast stitching and tartan inserts as a tribute to that 1975 GTI's black and yellow upholstery, and load it with every electronic gadget and gizmo they can think of, most of which will be expensive optional extras when the car finally comes to market.