One of the coolest things about the Nurburgring Nordschleife (or North Loop) in Germany is that they will grant access to the track to pretty much anyone in any car, as long as they promise to obey the traffic rules (yes, it functions like a one-way public road, but with no speed limit) and be courteous. And you can genuinely have fun in any vehicle around the ‘Ring, even in a tiny electric city car with not much power.
In this Out of Spec Reviews video, Kyle Conner took a Volkswagen e-Up! for a lap of the nearly 20-kilometer (13-mile) circuit and he looked like he had a lot of fun behind the wheel… even if the vehicle often reached its limited top speed of 130 km/h (80.7 mph), and with a zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) sprint time of 12.4 seconds, acceleration wasn’t blistering either.
However, thanks to some key modifications made by the vehicle’s owner, it wasn’t entirely out of its depth out on track. He put a KW coilover suspension kit on the electric Up! and also fitted it with some lightweight OZ wheels that definitely made a big difference when it came to cornering. With these mods and thanks to the battery pack placed low in the vehicle, e-Up! became a proper momentum car, one that on track you try to drive flat out in as much as possible, holding on to the little speed that it is able to gather.
Europe is full of e-Up!s and the equivalent models from Skoda and Seat. However, while the last two are no longer in production, Volkswagen actually began building the e-Up! again after taking it out of production, probably prompted by the apparent success of an even cheaper new electric city, the Dacia Spring, which we got to drive in 2021 and actually found quite appealing given how affordable it is.
