GTI Clubsport charges into SA
The 47 cars allocated for the SA market are all spoken for as hot hatch purists and GTI fanatics were quick to place their orders with VW
THE Golf GTI Clubsport S has arrived, but you cannot get one because all are sold.
The 47 cars allocated for the SA market are all spoken for as hot hatch purists and GTI fanatics were quick to place their orders with VW.
That the GTI Clubsport S is priced at R742 000 is therefore almost useless information.
So what makes this particular version of the most popular Golf so special?
It’s powerful and it’s light
The GTI Clubsport S runs the same 2.0-litre engine as the normal GTI (162kW/350Nm) and the
Golf R (206kW/380Nm), but in the Clubsport S this engine has been tuned to make 228kW and 380Nm.
Engineers got rid of everything they deemed unnecessary, which includes the back seat, some insulation material, the rear parcel shelf, bonnet sound damper and the spare wheel.
The seat in the back has been replaced by a strut brace to aid structural rigidity.
To bring the car’s weight down even further, a smaller battery has been fitted, the front axle has an aluminium sub-frame and brake covers are also aluminium.
Last year the GTI Clubsport S set a new lap record for front-wheel driven production cars at the famous Nürburgring, and then went on to brake its own record afterwards.
The hatch’s suspension has been specifically tuned to cope with the ring’s humps and sudden elevations which simulates normal road conditions, whereas most other racetracks are almost completely flat.
VW has raised the speed limiter to 265km/h, and to make it a car for the true front-wheel drive hot hatch purist, the only transmission option is a six-speed manual.
Fast into the corners
Karsten Schebsdat, the VW chassis expert who worked on the GTI Clubsport S’, described the work done on the hatch’s underbelly as follows:
‘The rear modular performance axle has been given extra potential for directional control to achieve higher lateral accelerations.
‘But without altering the McPherson front axle this would result in greater understeer.
‘To neutralise the understeer and at the same time boost grip levels, we counteracted understeer on the front axle and specially designed the hub carriers, resulting in higher camber angles.
‘The negative camber increases the potential for directional control, thus optimising the grip on the front axle.
‘Braking performance was also perfected, in particular to prevent the rear-end from breaking away, especially when braking into very fast corners.
‘Combined with the aerodynamics measures, this allows the driver to brake into bends with the Golf GTI Clubsport S in a controlled way, without losing driving stability.’
Distinctive look
When you own such a special hot hatch you want it to look different from the run-of-the-mill version, and therefore VW has given the car its own distinctive identity.
Apart from being the only two-door GTI, the Clubsport S sports a new front bumper which has been specifically designed to increase air supply to the engine bay and to create more downforce in the nose section.
The roof, rear roof spoiler and adjoining boot flaps are solid black, and so is the diffuser.
The ‘Pretoria’ 19 inch alloys are shod with Michelin Sport Cup 2 semi slicks.
Used shark market
Already some GTI Clubsport S cars are offered on used car websites, with owners asking ridiculous prices.
These vary from a cool one million rand to a whopping R1.6-million for a car in Cape Town with only 150km on the clock.
Lately it’s the norm that opportunists place early orders for cars they know will enter the country in small numbers, for the soul purpose of selling them right away at a huge profit.
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