Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the original hot hatch with a limited-edition Volkswagen GTI was a predictable move. Building an even more limited-edition variant capable of setting the fastest-ever lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife by a front-drive production car was maybe a little more surprising, but that?s what VW says it has done with its GTI Clubsport S, clocking a time of 07:49:21. (Watch the full lap in the embedded video below).
That time pips by 1.4 seconds the 7:50.63 record lap turned by the Honda Civic Type R just over a year ago. Like that Honda, VW?s champion won?t be finding its way to the U.S. market. (We will get the next-gen Type R, however.) We?re not even getting the regular 261-horsepower Clubsport special edition, let alone the even more specialer Clubsport S boasting 306 horsepower. While the Clubsport S reveal thrilled all the GTI nuts gathered for the annual festival of fast Volksboxes and plaid upholstery at Lake Wörthersee in Austria, the best you can do in a GTI in America is to opt for the Performance Package with 220 horsepower or choose instead the not-a-GTI Golf R that deploys its 292 ponies through all four wheels.
Only 400 Clubsport S models will be built ?for worldwide distribution? (only PR flacks think ?worldwide? also means ?except for you?), and 100 of those are reserved for Germany. Which makes a certain perverse sense in that the Clubsport S is so particularly designed to a purpose that there?s a special Nürburgring ...