Have you ever played with those tiny pullback toy cars? There is some pleasure in seeing them sprint so fast. The same goes with hot hatches as well. There is something about them, the way they zoom like a mouse let out of a trap. Now, imagine if a hatch features two engines under the hood. Well, that’s what this company from Romania has done to what used to be Volkswagen’s smallest hatch. The tuner has plonked two engines into the Volkswagen Lupo and took it to the U.K. to race it down the drag strips there. If this trend picks up and companies create such cars more often, we are in for a big, big trouble.

The Car With Two Fully-Functional Hearts

The car is built by DOP Motorsport from Romania and driven all the way to Santa Pod Raceway in England for the Volkswagen Action Show. For some reason, the company thought it would be a good idea to bring a deceased car to life by plonking not one, but two engines that can even put the Koenigsegg Agera RS to shame. One of the engines powers the front axle, whereas the other one, the rear axle. They make 900 horses each; yes, each. With a combined power of 1,800 horses, the Lupo does multiple runs on the Santa Pod Raceway. The engines are mated their respective DGH transmissions, and you can spot the driver flipping two gear levers inside.

That’s One Tough Nut To Balance

You can see the Lupo doing many runs in the video. In fact, in one of the runs, it drifts away into the next car’s lane. We’ve seen hundreds of ‘powerful’ car mods go wrong on the track. But, this one seems to have been built better and did not go through any mishaps other than the lane-switch, which was hilarious! But, to be fair, with that much power at your disposal, you are bound to face a lot of torque steer. It touches 161 mph before running out of the ‘official’ distance. I wonder how it would fare when it fires all the guns at once.

Despite Its Short Life, Lupo Saw Many Iterations

The Lupo lived just for seven years, from 1998 to 2005, before it was retired forever. The three-door urban commuter came with many engine options. The most powerful of the lot was the 1.6-liter, four-cylinder mill that made 123 horses and 112 pound-feet of torque. It took 7.8 seconds to sprint to 62 mph from a standstill before topping out at 127 mph. This engine came under the hood of the Lupo GTI.

Back When Volkswagen Was Greta Thunberg

Call it an irony, or whatever you may, but Volkswagen decided to make the Lupo a super-efficient car back in the day. Yes, Volkswagen made that attempt. With a diesel engine. Did the company get mixed with some bad apples later? Anyway, moniker’d with a misleading name; the Lupo 3L was a special edition car that was set to consume just three liters of fuel for every 100 kilometers. That is 0.8 gallons for even 62 miles (Man, I just laid out the calculations for a reference. Don’t expect me to do all the math. Duh!) To achieve this, the company used a 1.2-liter, three-cylinder, turbocharged diesel engine. The automaker used aluminum and magnesium alloys for doors, hood, tailgate, engine block, wheels, suspension system, etc. This brought down the weight to 1,830 pounds. The engine was mated to a Tiptronic gearbox, and an automatic engine start/stop system to avoid long idling periods. Low rolling resistance tires and a drag coefficient of 0.29 took care of the external factors to make it as fuel-efficient as possible.

Final Thoughts

Coming back to the topic, this experiment is so insane that it actually feels good now. Like I said earlier, the car hasn’t had any freak mishaps, and we hope it doesn’t. Now, we’ll be rooting for the car to make many more appearances around the globe so that we get to see it in all its glory. What are your thoughts on this little rocket? Share them with us in the comments section below.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2000 Volkswagen Lupo.