The VW Golf R 333 Special Edition Gets Gold Paint, Special Graphics and a Badass-Looking Akrapovič Exhaust System

VW will reveal its 333 Limited Edition Golf R on May 31.

A new short video is making the rounds this week, teasing a new special edition Golf R with some performance tweaks. Called the ‘333’, we get a few subtle hints of what this car’s all about.

Just looking at the silhouette, things look like your standard Mk8 Golf R. This one brings in some fresh looking gold paint, which does help jazz the hot hatch up a bit from its more reserved white, black and blue hues. Sticking with the aesthetic changes, Volkswagen also fitted some gloss black mirror caps and black fender trim (With the ‘R’ still standing out in blue), as well as some blue brake calipers sitting behind 19-inch Estoril wheels. Down the side, the VW Golf R 333 Limited Edition gets ‘333’ decals, so nobody can mistake what you’re driving here. The automaker does point out in the teaser that this car is a ‘near-production study’, so we could see some small details change between now and the reveal at the end of this month.

The coolest part of this Golf R we can see, though, is the quad-tip Akrapovič exhaust system. Not only does it look cool, but it should help the car’s 2.0-liter E888 turbo engine sound pretty badass. I certainly hope so, because then I’ll seriously want one. I like the stock Golf R Mk8 just fine, so these tweaks would be icing on the cake.

Volkswagen Golf R 333 Limited Edition - Akrapovič exhaust

For the moment, we don’t have much more information to go on. But what does the ‘333’ mean?

Well, European buyers saw the 20th Anniversary Edition put out 14 more horsepower than the standard model, which measures out to 333 in German Pferdestärke (or PS). Going by the mechanical horsepower figure we use, that means this car should put out the same 328 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque. Whether VW will sell it with a 6-speed manual transmission, its 7-speed DSG dual-clutch transmission or both remains to be seen.

It’s also unclear whether the VW Golf R 333 Limited Edition will actually make it to the U.S. With the clock ticking to bring out cool and fun ICE models before Wolfsburg axes them entirely, here’s to hoping we will see this car over here, at least in limited numbers. Hopefully, we’ll know more about that on May 31.