Hurrah! Volkswagen’s Worthersee concepts are here

Happy days. With the same reliability of Jeep’s Easter concepts (and, indeed, Easter itself), we have Volkswagen’s Worthersee concepts.

Worthersee is VW’s big annual shindig, which turns an unassuming Austrian town into what’s essentially the world’s biggest stag do. With an owners’ meet for all manner of modified VW group cars tacked on the side.

It’s wild, wonderful and unhinged in the best kind of way, but rather than leave the fans to their own insalubrious devices, VW turns up in an official capacity, and always with some mad, apprentice-made Golf concepts in tow. This year we have the two you see above, perhaps the last mk7 Worthersee specials we’ll see.

The three-door is called the Golf GTI Aurora, and while it looks rather heavily inspired by VW’s lightweight Golf TCR touring car – not least where its humongous wing lives – it actually has more power, with almost 380bhp derived from the Golf GTI’s tried and tested 2.0-litre turbo and pushed through a seven-speed DSG paddleshifter.

That extra power should come in pretty handy given there’s a “sound and multimedia tailgate package” (aka a massive stereo system in the boot) to now cart around. One that projects its controls via an actual 3D hologram, no less.

The second concept is the Golf Estate R FighteR, and before you get hung up on its objectionable use of upper-case lettering, know that it has even more power, with a frankly daft 400bhp. A hint at what the next, mk8 Golf R might possess? Perhaps.

It too uses a seven-speed DSG, but rather than throw its resources into sound (though there are still plenty of speakers), the FighteR is all about video, with a 360-degree camera on the roof that’s recorded a quick lap of the Sachsenring, which Worthersee attendees can watch courtesy of VR headsets. Knowing the motion sickness those can instigate, VW’s show stand could be quite the mess given how beered up some (nay, all) of those attendees are likely to be.

The lights on the top are more than decorative, too; the FighteR will be used as a safety car at the Sachsenring. Perhaps with that camera turned on to keep an even keener eye on the racers it’s marshalling…