Volkswagen once made a 2seat, carbontubbed, midengine, butterflydoor pintsized supercar with only 68 hp. This is the amazing story behind the most efficient internalcombustion car ever made.

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Volkswagen's chairman, Dr. Ferdinand Piëch, didn't believe in the impossible, and in 2002, he stated that VW would be the world's first automaker to produce a 1liter car: that's a car that uses less than 1l/100km of fuel, or roughly 250 mpg.

The development process lasted more than 10 years, through four cars: the 1L prototype, the L1 prototype, the XL1 prototype, and finally the production XL1.

What looked like an impossibility in hitting the 1liter mark was solved by swapping from the hybrid (1.38l/100 km) L1 to the pluginhybrid XL1, which received a final EU rating of just 0.9 l/100 km and 21g of CO2 per km.

Volkswagen committed to sell 200 of the XL1s to the public, which it did — at the astronomical price of €111,000.

By the time the 1liter car went into production, Volkswagen's allelectric eGolf was already in production — in theory rendering the XL1 obsolete.

But, like any parent throwing the "because I said so," Piëch said VW would make a 1liter car, and it did.

And besides, in the process, Volkswagen created one of the coolest cars ever made.