Volkswagen is undeniably one of the most powerful automakers on the planet, consistently rivaling Toyota for the top spot in global sales. The greater Volkswagen Group houses some of our favorite enthusiast brands, and those brands have produced some of the very best sports cars on the planet. That said, VW itself hasn’t really ever had a sports car of its own. Thanks to VW Design communications specialist Stepan Rehak, however, we now have our first look at what could have been, via these sports car concept proposal sketches from 2017.
The sketches posted to LinkedIn, which have never been shared with the public, center around an electric sports coupe. The concept itself draws inspiration from the SP2, which was a sports coupe developed by VW Brazil and sold from 1972 thru 1975. Known internally as the Type 149, the SP2 utilized a widened version of the Karmann Ghia’s Type 14 chassis. The car would also get a 1700cc flat-four engine, which didn't exactly deliver high performance. That said, the SP2 remains a VW icon, and today it carries a hefty premium over other VWs of that era.
This concept sketch wasn’t for a traditional rear-engined sports car, however. The design team was tasked with envisioning a car on the MEB electric vehicle platform, which underpins a large number of current EVs — the ID. 3, ID. 4, ID. 5, ID. 6, ID. 7, ID. Buzz, Europe’s Ford Explorer EV, and Audi’s electric takes on the Q4 and Q5. The platform is designed to accommodate both single motor/rear drive and dual motor/all-wheel drive layouts, though Rehak offers no word on what was planned for this machine. We would have loved to have seen a rear-drive VW sports coupe with the motor out back, if as much for the Porsche jokes as for the fun of driving it.
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