It’s the first time Volkswagen apprentices have designed a Cabrio for the GTI festival at Worthersee, and the first time the two groups from Wolfsburg and Osnabrück have collaborated on a model for the show.
The GTI Cabrio Austria, as it is known, is the sixth ‘apprentice’ model to premiere at Worthersee and it took pride of place in front of the Volkswagen stand at this year’s event.
Sporting Austria’s national colours, the hi-output version of VW’s open-air hero is powered by a modified 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine generating 245kW.
Its back seat has been removed to make way for an earth-shaking 11-speaker, 2250-Watt sound system, while the red and white colour scheme plays homage to the event’s host country, Austria.
Combining the efforts of automotive mechatronics technicians, vehicle interior fitters, technical model makers and paint technicians, the model is the realisation of four women and nine men aged between 17 and 23 years of age.
As well as the white/red colour scheme, the unique Golf Cabrio also sports red-painted mirror caps and brake calipers, customised Recaro sports seats and red highlights on the air-vent frames, steering wheel stitch-work, gearshift boot, seatbelts and floor mats.
Volkswagen has gone all-out at this year’s show, presenting not only the fruits of its apprentices’ labour, but also a WRC Polo, R Design Amarok, its one-millionth Scirocco special, new Golf GTI and GTD variants, Skoda Rapid RS concept and the show-stopping 375kW GTI Concept.
The GTI-Treffen event has been held annually in the small town of Reifnitz on the shores of Worthersee since 1982.
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