Armormax, a South African manufacturer of armored vehicles, has worked its magic on an eighth-gen Volkswagen Golf GTI, making it resistant to gun and rifle fire.
You may be thinking now: why the Golf?
Most conversions of this kind are performed on luxury vehicles. Armormax is
straightforward in its explanation: South Africa as a whole, and SAR in
particular, is ripe with crime, to the point when you can get attacked in broad
daylight by gun-toting robbers. The situation forces people to armor up the
most mundane cars, too, for purely practical reasons.
The conversion left the car 180 kilos heavier, but reliably protected from .357 and .44 caliber
bullets. It is unknown how much performance was lost due to the added weight.
The stock hot hatch packs a turbocharged engine with 245 PS and reaches 100 km/h in 6.4 seconds. The top speed lies at 250 km/h.
The armor class here is B4, which includes
bulletproof glass all around, synthetic armor in the doors and the bench seat
back, and other light shielding. The standard audio system got a push-to-talk
upgrade to let the driver talk to the people outside of the car without opening
any windows.
