In an interview with MOTOR magazine, Todd Ford said that the automaker’s R division is continuing to test the feasibly of a such model before confirming it for the mass market, but added that a successor to the killed-off Golf R400 would not happen immediately.
“Sometimes we look to other power sources so it’s great for our market to have that drive to have a greater performance product, it’s just the R division working on that. It’s their car, so it’s just them testing the five-cylinder engine as a large percentage of their work is evaluating and looking at new engines and technologies to see if there’s a business case for putting something to the market,” he said of the R420 powered by the same 2.5-litre turbocharged five-pot as the Audi RS3 and TT RS.
“Certainly there are no plans that we’ve been made aware of, but it certainly wouldn’t be the only thing they’re evaluating in terms of different drivetrains.
According to Todd, interest in a model more powerful than the standard Golf R remains high Down Under, and that pressure on Wolfsburg to make the R420 a reality, has continued to spike.
“We’ve had the stories of dealers who’d taken deposits for a car that didn’t even exist, but the passion and the interest in that was phenomenal, so we certainly shared regular stories [with Germany]. Again, no plans [for production], but there are always discussions”.
Pictured lapping the Nürburgring back in September, the prototype R420 could well serve as the swansong model for the current generation Golf Mk7.5, or even a test bed for the hybrid Mark VIII R that is reportedly due in 2020, and which will allegedly produce the same 298kW as the Mercedes-AMG A45, next Ford Focus RS and BMW M140i.
