It isn’t who you know, it’s what you know, that counts. At least that’s the way it works in the tuning world.
Brian Joss – And when it comes to the VAG EA888 powerplant nestled under the bonnet of the Golf GTi there are few more experienced tuners than RGMotorsport. Fact: since 2009 they’ve tuned all Graeme Nathan’s Volkswagens, winning six national Production Car championships in the process.
It is against this backdrop that RGMotorsport introduces their latest “Untamed” upgrade for the Golf7 GTi, turning it into a purposeful 195kW street-eater. The best news is that the entire package costs just R19 400 including a six-month, 20 000km warranty on the conversion work. That’s a bargain compared to what is being charged for some uprated Golf packages and that price is in fact discounted to R17 900 until the end of July.
The GTI is a perennial favourite with the Hot Hatch brigade yet simultaneously a car often criticised for its conservative 162kW power rating in showroom form. That’s the very reason for the RGM Untamed moniker, a signature that references elevated power without compromising two of the qualities that make the GTI great: reliability and refinement.
An Untamed package features the Simola-proven Goliath carbon fibre cold air induction system. The high-volume Goliath and its pleated cotton gauze cone filter completely replaces the standard, restrictive air intake and panel filter. RGM takes advantage of space at the front of the engine bay to create an elegant breathing solution and this, along with a large diameter silicone rubber pipe leading to the turbocharger, is worth 10kW on its own.
But intake is only one-third of the Holy Trinity of aftermarket tuning, the other two being exhaust and engine management.
What happens at the rear of the cylinder head is improved by an 85mm downpipe, which runs from the turbo back to a conical junction where the system is gradually reduced to 63mm in diameter. Then add in a plug-and-play engine management piggyback and on the dynamometer optimise settings for fuel and ignition from idle all the way to the redline. By the end of the process, customers will have a car capable of demolishing the quarter-mile in less than 14 seconds and running through the standing kilometre in little more than 25 seconds at a terminal speed of 215km/h.
