The Mk8 Golf GTD has been teased by Volkswagen ahead of its full reveal at the 2020 Geneva Motor Show in March.
It doesn’t give too much away but it does show us enough to know the front end is identical to that of the upcoming GTE model. That’s except for the badge, of course.
That means it shares the GTE’s headlights and the LED bar that emerges from the two clusters joining at the VW badge in the middle. It also has the same honeycomb grille, complete with those excellently integrated LED daytime running lights, stretching across the front bumper.
Whilst that’s all we get to actually see of the new Golf GTD for now, we have also learned a bit more about its powertrain.
According to VW, the 2.0-litre TDI engine that powers the new GTD is “one of the cleanest combustion engines in the world”. This is thanks to a “twin-dosing” of AdBlue from two catalytic converters meaning “NOx emissions will be greatly reduced as compared to its predecessor“.
Whilst that’s not a massively interesting development, it was an important one if the GTD is going to be successful. After the diesel scandal and with the ban on internal combustion engines being brought forward to 2035, it was vital that this diesel engine was as clean as possible.
Whilst there are no official power and performance figures yet, VW have describe’d the new GTD engine as “the most powerful … turbo diesel injection (TDI) engine ever to be installed in a Golf” – obviously, that’s good news.
In a recent leak regarding the power output of the performance variants of the Mk8 Golf, it was suggested that the 2.0-litre TDI would be putting out 197bhp, a substantial increase from the Mk7’s 181bhp.
We’ll find out how accurate the leak was when the Mk8 Golf GTD is revealed in full at the Geneva Motor Show next month.
Would you buy the new GTD or would you rather go for the cleaner, more powerful GTE? Let us know via the comments section below or via our Facebook and Twitter pages.
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