This Is The Volkswagen Polo GTI's Meaner, Angrier Brother

This is the new Volkswagen Polo GTI’s meaner, harder brother, and it means business.

It’s the sort of new kid that would push others off their chairs for no reason at lunch time. Then it would break the legs off the chairs for good measure and throw the uneaten lunch on the floor. This is a Polo you don’t want to mess with.

We first brought you news of it last month. The four-wheel drive Polo GTI R5 hooligan has a confirmed 268bhp from its four-cylinder, turbocharged 1.6-litre engine, plus permanent four-wheel drive and a close-ratio five-speed sequential manual racing gearbox. It’s got real biceps for a car this small, with 295lb ft of torque bulging from its angry body panels.

While the regular Polo GTI has a 2.0-litre turbocharged engine, it only puffs out 197bhp. Mind you, that’s as much as a MkV Golf GTI had…

The R5 weighs only 1320kg, which is heavy next to a certain classic Porsche build we brought you earlier in the week, but is quite light for a reinforced, steel-bodied, roll-caged and rally-spec supermini.

As such, it catapults to 62mph in just 4.1 seconds. That’s as fast as an Aston Martin DB11, a 2011 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and a McLaren F1 LM, according to AutoSnout’s list of 0-62mph times.

Volkswagen makes no secret of the fact that for its first R5-spec rally car it has borrowed heavily from the team at Skoda Motorsport, who have been offering an R5 Fabia rally car to customers since 2015.

The R5 rally class was born in 2012 and is designed to provide a cheaper entry point to global rallying. The Polo GTI R5 will make its way to customers in the second half of 2018 for a maximum of €180,000.