Have you ever wondered why the Golf is the only Volkswagen model, at least in the US, to wear the sporty GTI and R badge? There's actually a good reason.
In Europe, there have been GTI variants of the Lupo, Polo, Scirocco, and Up. Latin America even got a few GTI models you may not know about—the Gol, Parati, and Pointer. It’s a similar story with R models; the Arteon, Golf Cabrio, Passat, Scirocco, Tiguan, Touareg, and T-Roc all received hotter variants.
In order to find out why, Motor1 spoke to Serban Boldea. Boldea is the Director of Product Planning at Volkswagen of America, and he explained to us why GTI and R badges never expanded in the US:
'If we bring [a vehicle] to market with this badge and we’re going to stand behind it, then it’s gotta be the real thing. When R is put on a vehicle, it can’t just be some plastic and a sticker.'
Boldea stressed he can’t comment on future products, but promised that the company is working on more fun variants for the US:
