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

One thing we absolutely love about these older Volkswagen Golfs is how perfect they are for building into sleepers. Looking at this Golf from the outside, nobody in their right mind would ever suspect it is cranking out well over a thousand horsepower and is capable of running easily into the 8’s at nearly 170 MPH. While the exhaust might tip its hand somewhat, it’s still hard to tell the difference in a 300 HP turbo Golf and a 1,300+ HP turbo Golf, and that’s the beauty of these sneaky little hotrods.

This particular VW races under the Mtech Motorsports banner and is driven – quite masterfully, we must admit – by Michael Jensen. Running at England’s famed Santa Pod Raceway, the all wheel drive Golf fights for traction the whole quarter mile. That doesn’t stop Jensen from keeping his foot planted out the back door, lighting up the clocks with some spectacular numbers. On the first run, the car seems to have a bit of a hiccup on the launch, though it still rips the asphalt to the tune of 9.13 seconds at 167 MPH. One the second pass, the launch looks to be cleaner and the scoreboard reflects that when an insane 8.89 ET pops up at a staggering 169 MPH.

With Jensen still rowing the gears manually, we have to wonder how much an automatic transmission would help this car, already established as the most powerful Golf in the world, toward becoming the quickest in the world. From what we’ve seen, there’s still about a half-second on the table before this car is knocking on that door, and at these speeds, picking up a half second is a pretty tall order. Maybe it can be done with the manual and a little more traction, as the car was obviously skating around from start to finish. Maybe that alone would be enough to put this car into the #1 spot for ET as well.