RE: 503hp Design Vision GTI Golf

[toppstuff]

T1berious said:

It's a bit erm :whispers: Max Power isn't it?

It's a deeply lazy VW to "release" these pics.

Scoop! "Erm, the boys slapped this together (well, er they haven't) and it has erm.. well, not really sure but here's the pics and some outlandish power figures and er.. yeah, the drive train is er, made up of stuff"

Love and Kisses

VW Press dept

Move on.. nothing to see here....

Inside PH towers I have visions of a red phone in the centre of the editorial offices. It is a direct link to VAG PR department. PH staff sit around it and they have a contracted requirement to answer the call inside 10 seconds and publish what they are fed inside 1 hour.

If they don't comply PH is not allowed a Golf GTI ( in white ) to run as a staff car.

[Agoogy]

Centurion07 said:

Concept cars are a waste of time unless some of the tech makes it's way into production cars otherwise all you're looking at is some artist's doodle with a bunch of made-up figures to go with it.

Even if they actually built this car exactly as it appears and with all those big numbers, unless they put it into production why bother? All any concept car says is "look at what we COULD do. We're not going to of course, but we COULD. But we won't." Actually, scratch that. All it says is "look what our design team can do". It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Utterly pointless.

But the tech, the aesthetics and the numbers DO get made real, not right this second, not in one neat package, but in bits and bobs, upgrades and improvements across the brand. Head up displays, infra red night vision cameras, rear view cameras, LED lights a whole host of design languages, metal and production techniques, "my car is more powerful than yours" power games, huge MPG improvements, huge safety improvements, all have come from ridiculous never to be realised visions...
I don't personally understand the vitriol and angst displayed about a design department that has the front to release a sketch...
Do these people get upset when they see a comic book and get all upset because they've never met Batman in real life? It's automotve day dreaming, call it fun...it's artistic and in more cases than not, a REAL indicator of what will be being produced in the not too distant future.
We could of course just stop this aspect and produce neatly drawn proposals for the dull and unspired amongst us....sunscribe to What Car? and be happy...and look forward to the DVD release of "Mr Jones...by day a humble accountant.... but by night?!.....a sleeping humble accountant..."

[Agoogy]

toppstuff said:

Inside PH towers I have visions of a red phone in the centre of the editorial offices. It is a direct link to VAG PR department. PH staff sit around it and they have a contracted requirement to answer the call inside 10 seconds and publish what they are fed inside 1 hour.

If they don't comply PH is not allowed a Golf GTI ( in white ) to run as a staff car.

See! you do have an imagination!...your vision sounds fun and exciting...if a little sceptical and negative... like the lair of the 'villain'

[toppstuff]

Agoogy said:

But the tech, the aesthetics and the numbers DO get made real, not right this second, not in one neat package, but in bits and bobs, upgrades and improvements across the brand. Head up displays, infra red night vision cameras, rear view cameras, LED lights a whole host of design languages, metal and production techniques, "my car is more powerful than yours" power games, huge MPG improvements, huge safety improvements, all have come from ridiculous never to be realised visions...
I don't personally understand the vitriol and angst displayed about a design department that has the front to release a sketch...
Do these people get upset when they see a comic book and get all upset because they've never met Batman in real life? It's automotve day dreaming, call it fun...it's artistic and in more cases than not, a REAL indicator of what will be being produced in the not too distant future.
We could of course just stop this aspect and produce neatly drawn proposals for the dull and unspired amongst us....sunscribe to What Car? and be happy...and look forward to the DVD release of "Mr Jones...by day a humble accountant.... but by night?!.....a sleeping humble accountant..."

You've cited real, hard, touchable stuff. Made by engineers.

These sketches are all well and good, but people get bored of them. I know I do.

I want real stuff. Not fluff. And PH is guilty sometimes of not being able to tell the difference.

It is lazy journalism. Haymarket should be getting journo's into Germany , interviewing engineers and asking proper questions to try and get some insite, You know, proper journalism.

This is just a reactionary passing on of some meaningless PR fluff from the VAG publicity machine IMO.

I'd rather read an interview with an engineer, something where some work was put into it..

[skyrover]

wheelbase is too short for that much power...

[Agoogy]

toppstuff said:

You've cited real, hard, touchable stuff. Made by engineers.

These sketches are all well and good, but people get bored of them. I know I do.

I want real stuff. Not fluff. And PH is guilty sometimes of not being able to tell the difference.

It is lazy journalism. Haymarket should be getting journo's into Germany , interviewing engineers and asking proper questions to try and get some insite, You know, proper journalism.

This is just a reactionary passing on of some meaningless PR fluff from the VAG publicity machine IMO.

I'd rather read an interview with an engineer, something where some work was put into it..

Well I'd just say in response to that...
a) don't look at or read the fluff you don't like and then
b) look forward to the interviews and hard facts that follow the release of the production car that is made with the benefit of the progress in both hard touchable engineeringy stuff AND the new 'look' of the thing imagined in the brains of weirdos with wacky imaginations that put their ideas to an over excited artisitc genius with some colouring crayons.

You're of course correct, this image, and the related numbers in no way represents journalism... I for one just like looking at it..can PH not represent the artisitc fanciful side of the car industry? should it only be hard nosed in depth fact based news reporting....?

[toppstuff]

Agoogy said:

don't look at or read the fluff you don't like it........hard nosed in depth fact based news reporting....?

I see plenty of the former and very little of the latter....

[Agoogy]

hmm you're right...I'm not saying it's the way it should be or anything but on that basis can we not then label PH as the type of website that caters for the fluffy and not for the hard nosed...
Where should we look for the more in-depth fact based stuff?

[Ali_T]

Agoogy said:

What a bunch of miserable twunts you lot are...

Automotive enthusiasts? really?

Yes. We like driving things, hence the automotive part. If I want sci-fi, I'll watch Star Wars. I can't drive that either.

[Agoogy]

Ali_T said:

Yes. We like driving things, hence the automotive part. If I want sci-fi, I'll watch Star Wars. I can't drive that either.

Nice to meet you chief overlord and decider of what all things are and should be.

We[/i} or rather, I, as I'll speak just for myself, like driving too...I like wheels, engines, interiors, lights, mirrors, screens, ICE, doors, artwork, imagination, performance, stats, numbers, power, torque, tyres....hence what [i]I mean by Automotive.... If I want sci-fi I too would watch Star Wars....however that is a film about good vs evil and the ensuiing battle using space ships and imaginary life forms.
The associated article clearly depicts a car (well it does to me, the inclusion of a windscreen and 4 wheels helps here)..hence the automotive reference.

[toppstuff]

Oh come on , it's meaningless VW PR. They sent their best fluffers to PH towers and they published it.

VW may have just as well said that the car has quantum flux capacitors, can fly at 3x the speed of sound and uses a quantum singularity as a power source. It would have been just as realistic. And PH would still have published it.

[Ali_T]

Agoogy said:

Nice to meet you chief overlord and decider of what all things are and should be.

We[/i} or rather, I, as I'll speak just for myself, like driving too...I like wheels, engines, interiors, lights, mirrors, screens, ICE, doors, artwork, imagination, performance, stats, numbers, power, torque, tyres....hence what [i]I mean by Automotive.... If I want sci-fi I too would watch Star Wars....however that is a film about good vs evil and the ensuiing battle using space ships and imaginary life forms.
The associated article clearly depicts a car (well it does to me, the inclusion of a windscreen and 4 wheels helps here)..hence the automotive reference.

You can't drive imagination or artwork, and I think you'll find you look very silly trying to drive lights and ICE. You could run around making car noises while holding them, I suppose.

[4a4]

Why so much hate? hahaha

Cool concept - unlikely to make it, but it would be nice to get a proper proper 'performance' Golf. I know people with 500bhp Mk4 Golf R32s. Stock wheelbase, 500bhp, 4wd - absolute animals So, hardly impossible for VAG to achieve the same spec.

If you don't like it, don't read it!

[bashful]

Concept cars are all well and good, but the thing that spoils it for me is that top speed figure. Yes, we all know what it corresponds to in km/h and that it would *probably* be limited because of tyres in real life, but, come on - why even put a number on it? Why pretend that they've built the CAD model, worked out it's drag coefficient, and realised that, hey - it's top speed will be the same as every other hot-version-of-a-real-car ever? Lack of imagination, and isn't that what concept cars are about?

I would get more of a buzz if they said, truthfully, that the top speed is unknown - it'll be whatever number a hot-shoe test driver can white-knuckle out of it in the top lane at Nardo.

[aka_kerrly]

4a4 said:

Why so much hate? hahaha

Cool concept - unlikely to make it, but it would be nice to get a proper proper 'performance' Golf. I know people with 500bhp Mk4 Golf R32s. Stock wheelbase, 500bhp, 4wd - absolute animals So, hardly impossible for VAG to achieve the same spec.

If you don't like it, don't read it!

Agree with your's and Aggroo's view on this.

With so many topics on PH it does get somewhat boring when people jump into these threads ridiculing VAG at any opportunity possible.

I'd be willing to bet that the concept pictures go some way to show the mk8 performance edition that *could* quite easily make an appearance at Worthersee next year....

If anything I'd like to see more evidence from other manufactures that they have a design team who are allowed the same amount of freedom.

Just as an example BMW released sketches of a hybrid coupe in 2009, in 2011 the I8 concept was at the German motorshow and expected to be on sale in 2013.... Did people say the 2009 sketches were a waste of time?!?

[Agoogy]

Ali_T said:

You can't drive imagination or artwork, and I think you'll find you look very silly trying to drive lights and ICE. You could run around making car noises while holding them, I suppose.

I'm pretty sure you need imagination to invent the car in the first place let alone develop it in a meaningful way...
or to invent lights which allow one to drive when there is no other source of light..
Feel free to make engine noises whilst you ride your horse drawn candle..

[Ali_T]

Agoogy said:

I'm pretty sure you need imagination to invent the car in the first place let alone develop it in a meaningful way...
or to invent lights which allow one to drive when there is no other source of light..
Feel free to make engine noises whilst you ride your horse drawn candle..

We may be getting distracted from the point here. Here's the point:

VW make ultra powerful Golf concept. VW don't actually intend to ever make an ultra powerful Golf. Ultra powerful Golf concept is, therefore, just a cynical marketing stunt to get VW a few headline inches. In the end, it'll look like a Golf, with extra big arches and fail to show any of the imagination you seem to require in car design. Some concepts make the automotive world a better place, like Mazda's Furai, Bertones Stratos Zero or Pininfarina's Sergio, but this is just PR.

[Agoogy]

Or to take an alternative view..."Twin-turbo, V6, four-wheel drive Golf with 503hp shows just how far the new GTI platform can be stretched"
Thus giving engineers and designers useful knowledge about ways in which they can use VW new architecture...that they can do this and let loose a wild and attention grabbing one-off I fail to see a down side. Of course column inches are targeted and gained.... so what..business is cynical, but the enthusiasts within that business don't have to be.

[Ali_T]

You think they'll rigorously test this to full type approval standards? Or just shove in an engine and parts bin suspension & drivetrain, like they did with the W12, and nobody will ever know better? This simply isn't being done for any engineering reasons at all.

[Agoogy]

Ali_T said:

You think they'll rigorously test this to full type approval standards? Or just shove in an engine and parts bin suspension & drivetrain, like they did with the W12, and nobody will ever know better? This simply isn't being done for any engineering reasons at all.

For the first two parts of your post; I don't know, I don't work for VAG.
For the last part, I'd have to bow to your superior insider knowledge.

I can see of course where you're coming from, but even if this is a mobile advert made only to get attention, I fail to see a downside to it... I'm not paying for it..like most show cars, I just enjoy looking at them and appreciating the work put in and enjoying the drama....like a BMW art car or a Rinspeed boat/car/tank.
As far as the 'pointless' sketches, again in as much as I like a nice landscape watercolour of somewhere I'll never go, I just like taking in the image as it mashes up things I love..cars, art and automotive-based-fantastical imagination.
Not everything has to be deconstructed to obtainable reality.