City has had enough
The famous GTI Treffen at the Austrian Wörthersee ceases to exist. The local municipality, Maria Wörth, has canceled it because the event does not fit in with the ‘greening’ of the municipality.
Since 1982, there has been an annual gathering of Volkswagen GTI drivers in Reifnitz on Lake Wörthersee in Austria. An event that started small, but grew into a concept that even Volkswagen itself started working on. Where it started with Golfjes GTI, there has been much more to see from the Volkswagen tube for years and the brand itself often brings something special. In 2015, for example, it showed an insanely strong T1, in 2018 the curtain came off the Golf GTI TCR and sister brands Audi and Skoda also regularly chose the GTI Treffen as a stage for new creations. It has become such a popular party that eventually a maximum number of 5,000 cars was allowed in the town, although it could not be prevented that more than 100,000 people usually showed up.
Enough is enough now, says the municipality of Maria Wörth. It limits the event, as can be read on the website of the GTI Treffen. The municipality mentions that ‘numerous side effects’ of the event have fueled criticism within the municipality in recent years. It is also said that the event no longer fits within the ‘responsibility for the conservation of ecosystems’ and in the light of ‘effects of climate change’. Another factor is that the municipality is developing ‘sustainable homes’ in Reifnitz, which may not be offered with the caveat that a collection of cars is drumming around the corner for a few days every year.
It seems that the municipality is open to a different kind of event in the future, but there is a good chance that only electric cars will be allowed. “We continue to engage with the mobility industry, which, like us as a community, must take into account the profound change towards ecology and sustainability.”
Incidentally, the GTI Treffen was last held on a large scale in 2019, after which corona threw a spanner in the works. It should have taken place again this year, but it will not come to that.
In 2012 AutoWeek took a look at the GTI Treffen:
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl