The four-figure horsepower club remains an exclusive one, but membership isn’t the headache it once was. Back at the turn of the Millennium and the dawn of blown VR6s and high-power 1.8Ts, hypercar-worrying horsepower in Volkswagen usually meant finding space for a couple of engines and removing pretty much everything that wasn’t mission critical. Today, Tom Parker’s boundary-breaking 1,100hp Mk7 is living, fire-breathing proof that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.
“I drive the car every day, and I couldn’t ask for a more perfect daily,” he tells us. “It’s basically a road-legal racecar, but with all the creature comforts inside. The idea was to build something a bit like an Audi RS6 – big power when you want it but without losing the luxuries – but in a hot hatch. I’ve always gone the extra mile with my own cars.”
Tom has spent his entire adult life treading that fine line between sensory-assault power figures and daily driver usability. The Sheffield-based mechanic spent two years rebuilding his first car, a Mk2 Golf, from a bare shell before passing his test, and carried that experience over into jobs working at a local Volkswagen specialist garage. It offered some useful experiences; when the carburettor started acting up, Tom ditched the Mk2’s factory engine for a 1.8T and took the first steps towards what you see here.
Today, at 27, Tom runs his own Volkswagen workshop – TC Performance – with his Dad, and the Mk2 hasn’t stopped evolving in the meantime. Having adjusted to the 520whp of its stroked 1.9
