There are four brand-new supercars at this year’s Geneva
motor show. All are advanced hybrids and made of carbon-fibre.
Although, with just 47bhp from its 803cc turbodiesel, a 100mph top speed and
0-62mph in 12.7 seconds, Volkswagen’s
XL1 appears puny compared with LaFerrari, the McLaren’s P1 and Porsche’s
918. This diminutive silver machine is, however, every inch a supercar, from
its hi-tech construction, to its 300mpg-plus fuel economy.
More than 120 years after the invention of the first motor car, isn’t it time
we changed our view of the supercar? Welcome to the new super, super
efficient. And when this remarkable two-seat coupé trundled silently into
this year’s Geneva show having traversed the Swiss Alps from Lucerne across
the precipitous 5,000ft Brünig and Jaun passes, it was averaging more than
140mpg. Having covered this entire project from its very beginnings, it was
your correspondent, along with development engineers, swapping turns at the
wheel.
In 1998, Ferdinand Piëch, the then head of VW, ordered his engineers to
develop a “ine-litre” car. This refers to the German measure of fuel
consumption of litres per 100km, which equates to 282.5mpg. Wolfsburg went
into overdrive, producing a carbon-fibre bodied, tandem-seat, single-piston
engined special. Looking as though he was about to tackle the Bonneville
salt flats, Piëch climbed behind the wheel for his last public appearance as
VW chairman in 2002 and drove from his office in Wolfsburg to the VW
shareholders meeting in Hamburg. In the rain and in chilly temperatures, the
canny old engineer beat his own target for the car, setting an average fuel
consumption of 317·4mpg at 43·5mph.
