Look At The Front End Of The New VW Golf GTD And Its Snazzy Light Show

This is the all-new VW Golf GTD. Well, it’s as much of the Golf 8-based performance diesel as VW is willing to show you just yet - the full reveal isn’t happening until the Geneva Motor Show next month, so for now, we get this render.

It shows that the GTD will have a front end that’s - badge aside - identical to the Golf GTE plug-in hybrid. Yep, that includes the snazzy lights that integrate nicely into the honeycomb lower grille section and the LED bar that stretches between the clusters.

VW calls the GTD’s 2.0-litre powerplant “one of the cleanest combustion engines in the world”. It’s also the cleanest TDI engine fitted to any Golf, the company says, thanks to two catalytic converters which each feature “twin dosing” of AdBlue injection. Lovely.

We’re guessing you’re probably more interested in performance, however, and as luck would have it, the whole Golf performance range was subject to a stats leak a few weeks ago. According to the figures, the turbodiesel engine in the GTD will see a rise in output from 181bhp to 197. That makes it considerably less powerful than the 242bhp GTE, but it’ll be a much lighter car. The 280lb ft torque figure of the outgoing model (above) will no doubt be improved too.

Would you have one over the new Golf 8 GTI?