New Performance Pack option for VW’s hot hatch gets big brakes and more speed. For the sum of £2,300 (on top of the ‘base’ hatch’s £32,710), you can amp up your Volkswagen Golf R to 166mph.

Yes folks, it’s time for the Performance Pack option for Volkswagen’s venerable Golf R hot hatch. For that £2,300 outlay, not only does VW remove the 155mph top speed limiter to allow that 166mph top speed (168mph if you buy the more expensive estate), you also get better brakes and bigger wheels.

Those brakes are dubbed ‘R-Performance’, and shave 2kg from the braking system’s overall weight. We’re told these ‘built pin discs’ with their aluminium brake pots and cast steel friction ring means that under ‘stress’, the Golf R’s braking is more durable. Perfect, VW claims, for when you hit the track.

Elsewhere, the 18in standard-fit ‘Cadiz’ alloys are shelved in favour of 19in ‘Spielberg’ alloys. If you buy the hatch, you even get an extra rear spoiler that adds a not-insignificant 20kg of downforce.

So, harder, more durable brakes, new wheels, more speed. All nice and lovely.

If you want more schportiness, there is something else you can option on your hatch (not for the wagon, sadly) R: a titanium sports exhaust system. This is 7kg less than a regular R’s exhaust, arriving via the medium of exhaust specialist Akrapovic, and features round rear pipes and valve tech for “an incomparable exhaust sound”. Yours for £2,975.

You’ll note there is no power increase, but as standard the Golf R hatch (equipped with a DSG ‘box) produces 306bhp from a 2.0-litre turbo petrol, and will go from 0-62mph in 4.6s. Probably more, as VW can be quite conservative on those figures…

Welcome then, to the embiggened Brabus 900; a 2.8-tonne monster able to breach 217mph. Exclusive, yes, but also monumentally fast.

Supremely fast and opulent Mercedes made even faster and more opulent

We start with Brabus’s “tried and proven principle” of increasing the engine’s size. So the ‘standard’ Maybach’s 6.0-litre V12 gets bored out to 6.3-litres. To this, the tuner adds a custom billet crankshaft, forged pistons and balanced connecting rods.

Then come turbos. Big ones. Ones with large compressors and turbines, that feed in more air and ally with special exhaust manifolds, and a stainless steel high performance Brabus exhaust.

More air arrives courtesy of the special intake, and the resulting combustion process delivers that haymaker power figure of 888bhp, and 1,106lb ft of torque. Consequently, the 0-62mph time – and please do bear in mind this is a near three-tonne automobile – is just 3.7s.

Brabus has teamed the engine upgrades with carbon fibre aero changes outside: a new front spoiler and bumper with larger intakes, as well as a new rear bumper and diffuser. Pictured here is the 900 sitting on 21in and 22in forged alloys. You can opt for smaller wheels, but that’s not a question you need to ask yourself if you’re already this far in.

It sits 15mm lower thanks to the ‘lowering module’, and the inside is basically whatever your little heart desires. This one pictured is an example of what you can achieve: seat perforations machined for optimum ventilation (handy with 888bhp on tap), the optical fibre headlining, tables, Micrcosoft Surface 4 Pro tablets, a 3.5in screen integrated into the armrest between the rear seats…

It’ll be expensive, no doubt. Just how expensive we don’t know, but you can order one as a complete car, or indeed send off your Maybach S650 to the workshop and have it upgraded.

Would you?