Skip to main content

Gallery: Forge Motorsport’s 500 HP Mk1 Golf

Weighing in at only a trifle over 1,600 lbs and churning out more between 450 and 500 hp (depending on how much boost you feel like running), the Forge Motorsport Special doesn’t just wear its John Player Special livery, it earns it.

That’s because while the F1 car whose livery inspired this car’s—the Lotus 72—weighed a little less than this car (1,200-ish lbs), it also made less power (closer to 440 hp out of a three-liter Ford V8).

This Mk1, built in the UK by Forge Motorsport, makes do with a 1.8-liter 20V turbo. Although the engine only made about 150 hp from the factory, there’s very little of the factory left in this engine.

[See image gallery at www.vwvortex.com]

The British tuners tore the engine apart and replaced the crank with one from a 2.0 TFSI, installed some forged pistons from JE Piston, and tied them to one another with rods from Integrated Engineering. But before they did all that, they bored the engine make displace something more like two liters.

To help it get enough air, they installed a Nortech intake, Jenvey 70 mm throttle valve and an Owen Development turbo. They also used a lot of their own parts to make sure that it all worked together properly.

But even making nearly 500 hp, the Forge Motorsport crew was scared that the 1,800 lb Golf might weigh too much. Actually, it’s in keeping with the Lotus livery that they decided to cut weight, fitting carbon-kevlar doors and using the stuff to cut weight wherever else it could.

Keeping all that power on the road with a car that weighs less than some horses, you can imagine, is quite a challenge. So the Forge Motorsport gang trusted that to a KW (who kindly lent us these photos) Competition 2A racing suspension designed for hill climbing and a set of KW coilovers.

They also installed a splitter up front and the rear is kept on the ground thanks to a big ol’ diffusor placed under a big spoiler.

With a full racing cage, Cobra bucket seats, and countless other race car goodies, this Mk1 is as much hill climb racer as it is anything else. That doesn’t mean, though, that it can’t be enjoyed everywhere, because somehow the UK government has approved this for use on its roads.

We applaud you, Forge Motorsport.

Big thanks to KW Automotive who first ran this story (in greater detail) and lent us the beautiful pictures that were taken by Nick Williams.

The post Gallery: Forge Motorsport’s 500 HP Mk1 Golf appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2KM7aEN
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more