Volkswagen Golf GTI EDITION 50 Sets Blistering Nürburgring Record
Volkswagen will unveil the new Golf GTI EDITION 50 at the Nürburgring 24-hour race on 20 June 2025, setting a record before sales even begin. This exclusive anniversary edition, commemorating fifty years of the Golf GTI, becomes the most powerful production GTI ever and is set to reach showrooms in 2026.
Benny Leuchter steered a near-production Golf GTI EDITION 50 around the Nordschleife in 07:46.13, the fastest lap by any road-legal Volkswagen. The drive instantly etched the car’s name into Nürburgring history and underscored Volkswagen’s engineering progress.
“The new Golf GTI EDITION 50 is a statement with which Volkswagen expresses the pure GTI idea – the combination of superior drive power and exact chassis with front-wheel drive – more effectively than ever before,” remarks Leuchter after his run.
Volkswagen offers an optional Performance package that pairs a performance chassis with lightweight 19-inch Bridgestone Potenza Race semi-slick tyres mounted on forged wheels, trimming unsprung and rotating mass. “The record car was equipped with this package – that was the decisive factor in my opinion,” adds Leuchter.
Leuchter explains, “The entire set-up of the Golf GTI EDITION 50 means you can drive the ideal line of the Nordschleife with high precision. If you want to be fast on the track known as the ‘Green Hell’, the car also has to compensate for the typical bumps in the ground and reach very high cornering speeds. This is exactly what the Golf GTI EDITION 50 achieves in perfection. The aplomb with which it masters the peculiarities of the legendary Nordschleife is cool: the GTI is instantly stable over the entire 20.8 kilometres.”
Almost a decade earlier, Leuchter guided a Golf GTI Clubsport S (228 kW/310 PS) to a 07:49.21 lap, then improved to 07:47.31 in 2022 with the all-wheel-drive Golf R 20 Years (245 kW/333 PS). Those times measured a flying lap that excluded the 200-metre stretch in front of grandstand T13, whereas the EDITION 50’s 07:46.13 includes it. On-board footage shows 07:41.27 for the comparable segment.
“Three years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that I could ever beat the lap time of the outstanding Golf R with a front-wheel-drive Golf GTI as clearly as I have now. The fact that this has now happened – in quite bad weather, by the way – says everything about the successful set-up and extraordinary potential of this GTI,” Leuchter reflects. Until orders open, the Golf GTI EDITION 50 appears in the Nürburgring listings under ‘Pre-Series Models’, yet the record already signals its dynamic prowess.
