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I was browsing through the Tuner shops one day when I came across this little beast. Two figures leapt out at me: 556bhp, and 31870 credits. They can't be serious!!! 550 horses for less than 32k? This just has to be the cheapest 550bhp you can buy. There surely must be a catch, so I bought one to find out.
For starters, the car looks worth a lot more than 32 grand. The original Golf shape that spawned it always looked good in a chunky, solid kind of way, and the silver paint, tasteful bodykit and grey vinyls of the HPA car only improve on that. The huge alloys fill the arches perfectly and the end result is a classy looking street racer that's ready to turn convert 550bhp into some serious speed.
Looks are one thing though. Ability is quite another, and so the R32 finds itself on the Test Course, about to prove itself against the clock. This car has 4WD but I am expecting wheelspin in the face of 550 turbocharged horses, so I balance the revs at around 5000rpm and dump the clutch on a partial throttle. Four sticky tyres grip the tarmac with determination and the engine bogs down while the Golf stumbles away from the line completely off boost. Push the throttle a little bit more - hell, a LOT more - to stop it stalling and half a second later the engine whisks itself up to its limiter and the Golf is slithering along at 30mph with the wheels spinning wildly. Lift off a little, slot it into second, and squeeze the throttle again, more gently this time. 27mph later we're sitting at the redline again and it's time for another gear. Reach for third - gearchange is nice, swaps ratios as fast as you want - bury the throttle and the car leaps forward for an instant before demanding the next ratio. Fourth gear is pressed into service before we reach 100mph... the engine feels like it could pull much longer gears. Doesn't seem to be hurting the performance though. Despite the clumsy launch, 1000 metres have been covered in under 23 seconds and the little maniac is well on its way to its top speed of 179mph. The car would surely go faster than that if it did not run out of gears at that point.
With a few more practise runs it becomes fairly easy to launch this car with a little wheelspin before slamming through the gears as fast as you can move the lever. The result is a set of figures that put this car right in the middle of the supercar bunch. 100mph in under nine seconds is FAST. The standing kilometre took 21.73 seconds. To put that in perspective, the Zonda 7.3 is barely a car length ahead with a time of 21.23 seconds , and the McMerc SLR , at 21.7, has yet to put its nose ahead of the Golf. Of all the road cars I have figured, only the Ford GT can make the HPA look slow. It doesn't even matter how this car handles. That kind of performance for 32000 credits has got to make this one of the great bargains in the game. Still, if you are planning to race this, and I can't honestly tell you where it will even be welcome, I guess it would be good to know if the car can negotiate a corner without the driver having to get out and push.
With that in mind we wandered off to Tsukuba with fear in our eyes and once again raced a clock. The Golf coped admirably. The car certainly has more power than it feels comfortable with, but it's quick and safe, if a bit untidy. It understeers most of the time, though in the tighter corners a big squirt of power will sometimes break traction loose at the rear wheels and give the driver an entertaining powerslide. It can get a little squirmish under braking too, but other than that the car is predictable and safe. It's effective too. In the end it scrabbles around Tsukuba in an entirely respectable time of 1:04.99. Not the fastest 550bhp you can buy then, but almost certainly the cheapest!
Facts and Figures
HPA Motorsports Golf R32 Stage 2
Engine and drivetrain: 3.2 V6 twin turbo; 6 forward gears driving all 4 wheels
Power: 556bhp after oil change
Mass: 1485kg
Price when new: 31870 Credits
Mileage on test car: 0.0
0-60mph: 4.4 seconds (in 3rd gear!)
0-100mph: 8.7 seconds
0-400metres: 12.27 seconds @ 122mph
0-1000metres: 21.73 seconds @ 158mph
Top Speed: 179.3mph
Tsukuba lap time: 1:04.99
All tests conducted on N2 tyres. All traction and handling aids were turned off for all tests. All tests conducted in a-spec mode. 0-60 and 0-100mph times are taken from replay and are therefore approximates.
