It's claimed that Napoleon once said that he wore a red coat so you would not see the blood. He was obviously expecting to get hurt. In fact, in any job where you can get shot at or slashed, it seems quite a good idea to wear red.
That, however, is not the reason Abt chose red for many of its demonstration cars. Too many Abt cars I have photographed have been red for it to be sheer coincidence, so I just had to ask the question. It turns out that Abt realized that black or dark metallics, as favored by some other tuners, do not photograph well in bright sunlight or indeed when it is dull and damp. And Abt wanted its cars to look good in the press. Enlightenment!
It therefore came as no surprise when I asked Abt's effusive PR man, Jan Erren, what color its new modified Golf GTI Turbo was when he rang me up to say the car was ready. "Oh, it is red, of course," he said, as if surprised at the question.
Now Abt is no ordinary tuner. The company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1997, and the third generation of Abt ownership has also produced a red-hot race driver in the form of Christian Abt. Christian was the best privateer in the German Super TourenWagon (Touring Cars to you) Championship in 1996 and finished an amazing third overall.
Although he did not do quite as well in 1997, he chewed the tails of the Audi factory drivers so hard, they offered him a factory drive the following season. Only in the 2000 season has Christian hit a brick wall, as the Abt-prepared Audi TT has proven no match for the works Mercedes CLKs and Opel Astras in the exciting V8-powered DTM series.
With such a wealth of race experience behind it, you can take it as fact that Abt-converted cars handle. And they go as well. VW's 150-bhp 20-valve turbo engine in the Golf GTI Turbo is a tuner's dream, and Abt has not been slow to exploit this.
In the Audi A4 quattro, tuners regularly get more than 300 bhp out of a motor that was intentionally strangled at birth to stop it from embarrassing the V6 engines in the range. Of course, 300 bhp would snap the driveshafts and powder the gears of a front-driver, so Abt does not recommend you go beyond its 235-bhp Stage 2 conversion.
This car also has the show to match the go. The aggressive front and rear spoilers, side sills and the 40mm-lower sports springs and Bilstein dampers give the car a really purposeful look, and the sort of high-speed ground-hugging ability the rather soft factory original can only dream of. At over 120 mph, the Abt Golf is hands-off stable and the fat 215/45ZR17 rubber on 8Jx17-in. five-spoke modular alloys grip the tarmac like crazy glue when you are challenging the bends.
The new-style Recaros, trimmed to match the rest of the interior, really keep you in place when you are pulling gs. These new, more-rounded Recaros look less Recaro than the classic-style Recaros and integrate perfectly into the more organic interiors of today's cars.
Finding the extra 85 bhp is relatively straightforward. A larger KKK 03 turbocharger, larger intercooler, sports air cleaner, free-flow exhaust and a modified ECU do the trick. With 1.3 bar of boost, this bumps power up to 235 bhp at 5800 rpm and torque to a very beefy 247 lb-ft. Anyone who has seen the torque curve for a standard 1.8T engine knows that it goes up almost vertically from 1500 rpm and peaks at 1750 rpm with 155 lb-ft. It then maintains a plateau right through to 4600 rpm before falling away. The corresponding curve of the Abt motor also rises nearly vertically to the point where the stock curve peaks and then continues to climb at a less steep angle till it peaks at 3100 rpm and holds its 247 lb-ft to 4200 rpm before dropping away. It is a more peaky curve, but then there is so much more torque everywhere it does not matter.
If anything, the torque curve of this car shows up the effects of modern electronic engine management on turbocharged engines. In the old days, when we only had mechanical controls, a mechanical ignition retard had to reduce turbo boost as revs increased. Turbo boost had to be introduced gradually and compression ratios had to be modest to avoid detonation Today, knock sensors and fully mapped ignition allow high-compression ratios. They also allow the turbo to spin up faster and deliver high boost at low rpm for enhanced low-end torque and minimal turbo lag. They then cut back on boost as revs rise.
So the horses are well fed, but it is really the greatly enhanced torque which makes this car the flier it is. You have to slip rather than dump the clutch to get away cleanly. Get it just right, though, and 60 mph comes up in 6.4 sec., 100 mph in 15.2 sec. and top speed is a frightening (for a Golf) 151 mph-even with all the body kit and big wheels spoiling the standard cars drag coefficient. As an indication of its mid-range punch, 50 to 75 mph is covered in 5.1 sec. in fourth gear and 8.4 sec. in fifth; 50 to 100 mph takes 11.8 and 17.8 sec., in fourth and fifth, respectively.
For some reason, Abt calls this conversion the VS4. Strange, really, as the engine is an inline four. No matter, it turns the torque rich new Golf GTI into a seriously red-hot hatch with enough grunt to give sports cars like the BMW Z3 2.8 and Porsche Boxster a very hard time.
Speed, however, is not everything. In standard form, VW's latest Golf feels a much more grown-up car than its predecessor. Because of this it is also even more detached from the road sensations that made the Mk 1 especially such a buzz to drive.
Making the Mk 4 go faster and handle better still does not change its character. While the Abt VS4 has vastly superior all-round performance than the standard GTI 1.8T and a more interesting exhaust note, in no way does it deliver the sheer joy that punting a well-sorted Mk 1 or Mk 2 down a winding road can bring. That sadly, is the price we pay for progress.