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The enormous GTI festival at Worthersee (think Glastonbury for Volkswagen fans, and you're getting there) has kicked off in Austria and, as ever, Volkswagen has the concepts and one-offs out in force. One of the nicer aspects of the huge event is that teams of apprentice Volkswagen engineers get to show off their special projects to appreciative fans, and this year we have the Golf TGI G-Motion, and the Golf GTI 'Next Level.'
The two cars are the work of two teams of apprentices, 29 in total, working across a dozen different disciplines. Both cars needed the students to work on CAD/CAM and 3D printing tech, as well as creating apps for controlling aspects of the cars' behaviour.
The TGI G-Motion uses Volkswagen's recently-introduced 1.5-litre turbo engine, but this time fuelled by natural gas. It runs a seven-speed DSG automatic gearbox and four-wheel drive. The apprentices, 14 of them from the factory in Zwickau, the Chemnitz engine plant and the Transparent Factory in Dresden, have created the 131hp model which they say "shows that alternative powertrains are not only suitable for families but also for business use."
The car is painted in a mixture of gloss and black paint, some of which has been helpfully pinched from the Bentley parts bin, and there's even chrome paint. The sports seats get special stitching and a G-Motion logo. On the chassis front, there are new coil-over-dampers which can be dropped by as much as 40mm, four-piston brakes, and a modified exhaust system.
The 'Next Level' GTI is rather more exciting, as its 2.0-litre TSI engine has been pumped up to a whopping 411hp (supposedly a proposed mod for a super-GTI model that got killed by the diesel furore), and it too gets the seven-speed DSG 'box. It gets a split colour scheme of white silver metallic (at the front) and black pearl metallic (at the rear) and there are oh-so-eighties foil graphics in an arrow shape down the side.
Inside, it's a two-seater, and the back is taken over by a massive entertainment system, for which the 15-strong team of apprentices used digital design techniques, as well as developing app-based control systems for a retractable LED monitor and, wait for it, under-vehicle LED lights.
"During the creation of their dream Golf, our apprentices learn about the complexity of automobile production and many future-oriented topics. They also gain practical experience in the application of digital technologies, control and systems technology and the networking of vehicles with the Internet," says Andreas Strutz, Head of Vocational Education and Further Training Vehicle Construction of the Volkswagen brand. "For this unique vehicle project, we select especially committed young talents and give them the opportunity to learn from experienced colleagues at an early stage."