1998 Volkswagen Lupo
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Published 2022-06-26
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Click the car, use the space bar or arrow keys to view trim levels and colours of Volkswagen's smallest car of the early noughties.
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By the late 90s, the Polo was getting bigger and more expensive, so to fill the gap the Polo grew out of, Volkswagen rebadged and changed the interior of the Arosa, a tiny car based on a shortened Polo 6N platform by Volkswagen's Spanish sister company, SEAT.
Trims on launch were the E and S, the Sport and GTI arriving within a couple of years after. E was fairly well equipped, especially for a car of this class. 'E' standard features included twin airbags, 'Beta' radio/cassette player and painted bumpers, and upgrading to 'S' brought a few convenience upgrades like central locking and electric windows. The 'Sport' was boring and removed the vent windows from the S, so was really worth absolutely nothing.
Anyway, then there's the GTI. Some saw it as a spiritual successor to the original Golf GTI, with a 1.6 litre, 125PS engine bringing this microbe sized car to 60mph in under eight seconds. It had a stylish bodykit and large alloy wheels, was quite lavishly equipped and was really the star of the show.
We can't talk about the Lupo without mention of the 3L. Launched in 1999, this was the first ever production car to go 100km with only 3 litres of fuel. That's 90mpg! Drastic changes were made to help achieve this, a teeny 1.2 litre, 3 cylinder turbo diesel engine (contrasting the name!), aluminium and alloy body parts, engine start/stop and a tiptronic gearbox to name a few. Needless to say, 100mpg was possible in this wonder of a vehicle.
Unfortunately, sales of the Lupo as a model were not as successful as VW hoped, likely due to the fact a very similarly specced Polo was a larger car for only a bit more money. 477,501 cars were produced within its 7 year lifetime.
It was replaced by the Brazillian-designed Fox in 2005 and later the up! in 2011.