At Vienna's International Motor Symposium, Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, VW Group's chairman, laid out a strategy to increase fuel economy an additional 20 percent, fleet-wide, by 2020. At the heart of this plan is a new DSG box, with an additional four gears tacked on for a total of 10 ratios. Officially, the additional gears are solely to increase fuel economy.

What does this mean for performance? Hans-Jakob Neusser, VW's development chief, confirmed to Autocar that the gearbox was capable of handling up to 369 lb-ft of torque—not enough for the company's current US V6 TDI models, but plenty of leeway to support more powerful four-cylinder TDI models (such as a just-announced twin-turbo 236-hp unit), and even the 332 lb-ft the Golf R400 is supposed to produce.

The question remains, if it's available in a high-performance VW, will anyone want to flap the paddles quite that much?

CHECK OUT: Volkswagen's TDI Sportwagen concept from NYIAS 2014

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