Most Powerful VW Golf In The World – 1300+hp – 8.8 @ 169mph

Ripping of an eight second quarter mile is an achievement that many racers go their whole lives and never accomplish, so to see a guy out on the track in a car that looks like it would struggle to run 8’s in the eighth mile is pretty amazing. Just looking at this Volkswagen Golf, you would think it’s mostly stock, likely with wheels and exhaust, at least as long as you didn’t walk behind the car and catch a glimpse of the parachute hanging back here, as that would surely give away the potential of this wicked sounding VW.

As soon as the driver rolls into the gas to lay down his burnout, you can tell the car is pretty serious, but even the hateful exhaust note doesn’t give away the full extent of what’s about to happen. The driver rolls up to the starting line alongside another VW, this one of the Beetle variety, and goes into full-on warrior mode. When the tree drops, so does the hammer, and the 1,300 horsepower engine screams to life as the car launches off the line. A second later, a brief pause from the engine while the driver shifts gears – that’s right, it has an actual manual transmission – and then the car roars back to life. A couple more seconds and another shift. On the first run, the car begins to skate around mid-track, but still results in a 9.13 elapsed time at a blistering 167 MPH.

The driver brings the Golf around for another shot and it stays planted much better this go around, lighting up the boards with an unbelievable 8.89 ET at 169 MPH, putting the car well into the magic 8-second zone. You can see on the second pass that the car still had some traction issues, meaning there’s even more potential left in the little badass Vee-Dub. There’s a good chance we’ll see this thing even deeper into the 8’s if they can get the car to stay planted for the whole quarter mile.