This VW concept used to be our diesely future

This is the Volkswagen EcoRacer concept, unveiled at the Tokyo motor show in 2005. Ah, those glorious days of yore when you could be in a room with thousands of other people on the other side of the world to stand and look at a car that isn’t doing anything. 

Well it was, really. Audi had done a super economical car in the form of its futuristic A2 hatch, and Volkswagen made a stab in Germany with the Lupo 3L, so-called because it could travel 100km on three litres of fuel. But neither of these was particularly sexy. Volkswagen wanted to promote its efforts to make economical diesel engines and it needed an attractive vehicle in which to do it. Cue the EcoRacer, with all its sharp lines, fancy CFRP bodywork and techy weight-saving. It was powered by what Volkswagen called ‘the next generation’ of diesel engine for the firm. Awkward. But then it was all so carefree and innocent back in the early Noughties. 

Indeed. No batteries in sight at this point – until Volkswagen spiked the punch with Dieselgate in 2015, everyone thought our glorious low-CO2 future was going to be diesel-powered. The EcoRacer is the ghost of concepts past, here to remind us of the alternate reality that could have been. It was designed by Spaniard Cesar Muntada, who has gone on to become the head of light design at Audi. One of those jobs you’ve never really thought about but of course it exists. 

It’s all about the roof (although the headlights do look as if they were left over from a Lego set). Volkswagen’s headline-grabbing hijinks involved making the EcoRacer a three-in-one special. You had your normal coupe as standard, with a sort of breadvan-style roof extension for added aerodynamics. That could be removed, if you wanted to put a luggage rack over the bootlid. The main roof section (which lifted up on either side to make getting in and out much easier) was removable to create a roadster, while the windscreen could also be jettisoned in order to create a speedster and go for the full flies-in-your-teeth experience. Those things are all the rage these days (speedsters, not flies) – the EcoRacer truly was ahead of its time.

Interestingly, the idea of a 1.5-litre 4cyl diesel was a bit of a revival for Volkswagen – it had a motor with that layout in the first-generation versions of the Golf and Passat back in the mid-Seventies. The modern version of the 1.5 that was teased in the EcoRacer saw action in the MkV Polo and is still around today in a number of models for developing countries. A 1.6-litre version with 100cc more space in the cylinders has become more popular in the VW Group range. 

The downsized diesel engine in the EcoRacer concept produced a fairly meagre 134bhp and 184lb ft of torque, but then when you consider that the car weighed in at a flyweight 850kg, it all starts to make a bit more sense. The headline stats are all fairly impressive in that context – the EcoRacer would despatch 0-62mph in 6.2secs and reach a top speed of 143mph, all while managing an impressive fuel consumption of 83mpg. Phew. There’s a future we can get behind.

A visual feast – like if Lotus had ever had any money to make the Elise’s interior nice. You’ve got a chunky steering wheel, strictly two seats, a plethora of ovoid switches and air vents, as well as a centrepiece transmission tunnel running through the cabin featuring what are undoubtedly fake exposed screws. There’s exposed carbon fibre throughout the cabin, as well as stitched leather. We could imagine feeling right at home in here. 

The EcoRacer has been shuffled off to the great warehouse in the sky, and Volkswagen’s tease of suggesting that an eco-friendly car could be a hoot to drive but then not building it could be seen as rather cruel. Not since the Honda Insight have we seen anything as attractive in its sheer geekiness – that is until the XL1 came along. This was the EcoRacer dialled up to 11 – a 0.8-litre diesel-powered plug-in hybrid that managed 310mpg and showcased a panoply of high-tech lightweighting techniques. It was never particularly sporty, but that was never particularly the point. This was a wagen only for the rich volks, though – at £120,000 you’d have to save a lot of petrol before the XL1 really started to pay for itself.