This post was originally written for Oppositelock, but with the impending death of Kinja user blogs, I’m reposting it here.
The Volkswagen 1-Liter-Auto concept, from 2002. It was one of Ferdinand Piech’s three projects designed to create a corporate culture of cheating to make the boss happy as halo cars to demonstrate the technical prowess of Volkswagen – the other two being the Phaeton and the Veyron. The Phaeton’s goal was to be the best luxury sedan in the world, the Veyron’s to be the fastest car in the world while still being easy to drive, and the 1-Liter-Auto’s goal was… to consume 1 liter of fuel for every 100 kilometers, or in ‘murrican units, 235 miles per US gallon. And, it had to do this while actually being capable of decent speeds – top speed was 120 km/h, or about 75 mph.