What is this: It looks like an airplane fuselage, seems to be flat on the ground and was 362 km/h in its best days?
Answer: the ARVW, i.e. in short the »Aerodynamic Research Volkswagen«.
The VW research car was created in the late 1970s as a result of the preceding oil crisis.
Fuel prices had risen sharply, and car manufacturers were experimenting with all sorts of fuel-saving techniques.
A particularly promising approach was to make the cars more streamlined.
The engineers at VW in Wolfsburg are also working on this topic.
And the ARVW was created in order to obtain »detailed information about the relationships between the aerodynamics of an automobile and its fuel consumption«.
The aerodynamics research car was also called "Fiala's cigar," as SPIEGEL reported in November 1980.
At the time, Ernst Fiala was VW board member for research and development, so the strange vehicle was his area of responsibility.
To this day, the ARVW is probably one of the most aerodynamically optimized vehicles ever.
A five meter long, 1.10 meter wide and only 83 centimeter high plastic body spans an aluminum frame, the highest point of which is a Plexiglas dome.
There is just enough space underneath for a person to steer the vehicle.
Wheels cannot be seen, they are disguised.
The underbody is smooth, and there are hardly any joints on the visible part of the body.
Two wings at the bow and two small fins at the rear should stabilize the vehicle at high speeds.
The result of the streamlined precision work was a frontal area of 0.91 square meters and a drag coefficient of 0.15.
For comparison: The current VW Golf has a frontal area of 2.21 square meters and a drag coefficient of 0.27.
In conjunction with a 2.4-liter six-cylinder turbo diesel engine, which was arranged directly behind the driver's seat, the extremely streamlined shape of the ARVW enabled amazing driving performance.
The vehicle, which weighed just 800 kilos, reached a top speed of 362 km/h.
And as the measurements by the VW technicians showed, the average consumption at this speed was a comparatively moderate 13.2 liters per 100 kilometers.
In short: The ARVW confirmed what everyone had suspected beforehand.
Namely, that aerodynamic meticulousness can massively reduce fuel consumption.
However, it also influences the look of a vehicle and thus its suitability for everyday use so much that such a streamlined car would be practically unsaleable.
VW therefore primarily used the ARVW to demonstrate technological competence.
Among other things, the fact that Formula 1 driver Keke Rosberg set two world records at the wheel of the car in October 1980 on the high-speed circuit in Nardo in southern Italy.
Over a distance of 500 kilometers, the ARVW reached an average speed of 345.25 km/h;
and an average speed of 353.41 km/h during an hour's drive.
Both records are unsurpassed to this day.
Apparently it was planned at the time to break even more records, but this did not succeed.
The reason it was rumored was that the ten centimeter wide drive chain, which was installed to transmit power from the engine and transmission to the rear axle, was not up to the strain over long distances and longer driving times.
Today, the silver-colored car is one of the most eye-catching exhibits at the Volkswagen Automuseum Foundation in Wolfsburg.
With the increasing spread of e-mobility, the topic of aerodynamics has once again gained in importance.
Mercedes, for example, recently presented the particularly streamlined EQXX concept car and drove more than a thousand kilometers with just one battery charge.
The drag coefficient of 0.17 was impressive, but the high-tech electric flounder did not come close to the fabulous value of the ARVW (0.15).
