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Bigger is better has long since been an unofficial mantra of the automotive world. To go faster or further, you have to go bigger. Either by way of more cylinders, bigger turbos, thicker sway bars, the increase in size helps quench the thirst for speed. The Golf GTI and all its subsequent variants have been showing us since 1974 that sometimes smaller can be just as good, and plenty of speed and practicality can come in a condensed package. The same can be said for our intercooler design for the latest generation of VW's compact chassis. It's not the size that matters, but rather the innovation packed inside.

Limited space in the engine bay is always a challenge when it comes to designing new products, but in the case of the MK7, it was a major obstacle.

With the MK7 especially, available space is the first major hurdle to overcome. If you revisit the stock review of the MK7's intercooler, you'll see that the intercooler is the meat in a heat exchanger sandwich, all mounted on the front

When we're talking about cooling the charged air in any forced induction vehicle, the intercooler always steals the show. To be fair, it is doing a majority of the work. No matter if you're still running a stock unit or if there's an all-aluminum core seated in the front of your car, it's the star. However, the intercooler would be nothing without the back-up band, the intercooler piping. Putting in all the effort to cool off the charged air would be useless without a method to transfer it to the intake. If the stock intercooler unit had some shortcomings, the piping was bound to end up with some flaws, too.

The safe passage for your charged air is currently left up to the combination of plastic and rubber construction that makes up the factory piping. It might seem that we're prejudice against these building materials, but it's quite the opposite. These materials are great for the mass production of your Golf or GTI, providing an easily produced, lightweight channel for the charged air

Oil catch cans are a hotly debated topic, yet one fact is still irrefutable; oil blow-by will always be a real byproduct of the modern direct-injection engine. Intakes, charge pipes, and turbos all come into contact with the stuff over time. Sometimes, even newer, low mileage vehicles develop blow-by issues. With direct injection, fuel is injected directly into the cylinders, eventually resulting in carbon buildup on the valves. This was not an issue with port injection, since fuel injectors were placed in the intake manifold. The air-fuel mixture is sprayed directly on the valves, essentially cleaning them each time an injector fired.

Carbon and oil buildup in direct-injection engines can negatively impact vital engine components and can result in an expensive fix later down the road. I can go into long, excruciatingly deep detail about the dangers of blow-by, but I've given you the basics of what you should know. For more information, I strongly suggest that you take a look at our technical

We've got hot hatch fever! One of the newest vehicles to grace our garage, which happens to be our 3^rd hatch for intake development, is the new 2015 VW GTI. Although Volkswagen was far from the first company with a hot hatch in its lineup, it was one of the first companies to really push the popularity of the design. VW is synonymous with the term "hot hatch" to most automotive enthusiasts. With the emergence of VW's newest GTI, it's time for us at Mishimoto to design our own intake for this turbocharged 2.0L engine.

GTI arriving at the shop!

Goals

Newer GTIs can either come with or without a Secondary Air Injection (SAI) pipe. Basically, this is a system that forces more air into the exhaust during start up and acceleration, which creates a richer air-fuel mixture. With more air going into the exhaust, the byproduct is less concentrated, and this is generally good for the catalytic converter. For this MK7, we will have two systems - one for SAI cars, which will include a breather filter,