Here's Your First Look At The VW Polo GTI R5 Customer Rally Car

Around this time last year, VW announced that it was quitting the World Rally Championship. Today, VW has revealed, err, its new rally car.

However, proceedings are a little different this time. It’s a more hands-off approach - rather than having a full factory effort, VW will instead make this new 270bhp Polo GTI R5 “available to professional teams and aspiring drivers to enable them to compete in championships across the globe.” And yes, that does include the WRC. It’s all about expanding VW’s customer motorsport programme, which already includes the Golf TCR for circuit racing.

We haven’t seen any images other than the teaser sketch above, but VW has revealed a handful of technical details. We know it’ll be powered by an inline-four cylinder engine, which will send power to all four wheels via a five-speed sequential gearbox.

No huge surprises there, given those aspects are mandated by regulations for the R5 class, the cars of which sit just below fully-fledged WRC machines. Those same regulations will also force the use a 1.6-litre engine (the production version uses a 2.0-litre lump), while the price will be capped at €180,000.