The VW Chico Is A Two-Cylinder Renault Twingo Rival That Never Was

It took until 1998 for Volkswagen to have its first crack at making a proper city car. With the Polo having grown to the size of an original Golf, which itself had just swollen into its then-chunky fourth iteration, and with Renault taking Europe by storm with its very cheap, yet charmful Twingo, a gap existed for some time in VW’s line-up that would eventually be filled by the Lupo. However, things could’ve been oh-so different if one concept made production.

What you see here is the Volkswagen Chico, a design study of what its engineers could do if given the green light for a frugal four-seat city car. It was showcased at the 1991 Frankfurt Motor Show, a year before the Twingo first hit roads.

It borrowed its name from a South Africa-specific version of the original Volkswagen Golf that had remained in production long after it disappeared from Europe.

Mind you, this wasn’t some attempt at offering the most basic, barebones value-for-money city runaround, with genuine cutting-edge technology on board. For a start, this was a hybrid, pairing a 34bhp two-cylinder engine with an 8bhp electric motor. Its two-pot would be used at speeds over 32mph and during acceleration, with the motor taking over when at constant speed.

Driving information was fed to you through an LCD, rather than regular dials and gauges, along with a head-up display which could display navigation. Commonplace now, but this was space-age stuff back in 1991.

Certainly, on looks alone, the Chico could’ve rivalled the cutesy Twingo, Those tri-spoke wheel covers and graphics scream 1990s, and despite its concept nature, doesn’t look far from production-ready. Measuring just 3.2 metres long, it was about 20cm shorter than the French icon, too.

Despite being an impressive little thing, the Chico would never make production, being consigned to the books of long-forgotten concept cars and a wonder what could’ve been.

The Chico reportedly name came close to a revival in 2012, when Volkswagen had planned a stripped-back, even smaller version of the Up. Rumours from the time suggested it would be based on a modified version of the city car’s chassis with just two seats and a bargain-basement cost. This was never officially confirmed, mind you, and no such car saw the light of day.