Volkswagen’s ‘start-stop system’ in 1991 – From the Old Box

Clever tricks to make cars more fuel efficient are definitely not something from the past two decades. For many years now, car manufacturers have been looking for innovative ways to reduce fuel consumption. Think, for example, of the oil crisis in the early 1970s, when mainly American manufacturers simply resorted to smaller engines for their models. Toyota did something special, however, and reportedly brought some sort of start-stop system to the Crown in 1974, where the engine cuts out when you press the clutch at a standstill and fires again when you release it. Sounds familiar. Eventually this principle also spread to Europe and European brands started experimenting with it. Volkswagen did this for the first time with the ‘Eco-Golf’ dubbed Golf II.

AutoWeek was able to hit the road with this Eco-Golf exactly 30 years ago to try it. This did not quite do the same as what you are now used to with a start-stop system. He also let the engine stall while driving, which can best be compared with the ‘sailing’ of modern cars. The Eco-Golf was equipped with a 1.6 diesel engine that was linked to a semi-automatic with a (now vacuum-assisted) clutch from a Golf with manual gearbox. The coupling was electronically controlled. If you quickly released the gas, the car disengaged itself and the engine stopped after a second and a half. If you gave it gas again, the whole thing reconnected and the power source started again. The car just didn’t do this in first gear and reverse. So the engine didn’t just stop when you were waiting in first gear for the traffic light, for that you had to put the Eco-Golf in neutral. Just touching the gear lever, or – if the car was still in gear – accelerating, was enough to bring the engine back to life.

This resulted in a Golf in which the engine – depending on the route traveled – was not running up to 50 percent of the time. That does not sound completely safe, because a car also needs a running engine for power brakes and power steering while driving. However, the Golf did not have the latter at all and the power brakes were absorbed by an electrically driven vacuum pump. For this, there was also an extra battery in the Golf, which further ensured that the lighting remained on when the engine was not running. This was also to spare the main battery, which obviously had to work hard with the constant restarting of the engine.

The test editor on duty found it quite awkward at first, a car that seems to be constantly giving up the ghost. After some time, however, it started to get used to and it was also noticed that the Eco-Golf drove quite pleasantly despite the regular stalling of the engine. Incidentally, you could also deceive the system if you prefer to keep the engine running, for example by reducing the throttle more gradually. It could also be switched off in its entirety, with a ‘Motorbremse’ button. As the name suggests, this was mainly intended to enable engine braking with the Eco-Golf, for example in hilly areas. Then the Golf just drove like a conventional semi-automatic car.

What did it do? Well, a much lower consumption than usual. The Eco-Golf that AutoWeek drove consumed about 50 percent less diesel than a comparable Golf without the system. On an urban route of 144 km with an average speed of just under 30 km/h, the consumption was 1 to 22.4. The engine had been restarted 403 times in the 4 hour 49 minute drive and had not been running 48 percent of the time. On a varied route with an average speed of 57.2 km/h it was less impressive, with a switch-off percentage of 29 percent and a consumption of 1 in 19.3. The Eco-Golf therefore came into its own in the city, because of the many moments when you let go of the gas for a longer period of time.

All in all, the conclusion was that it was a promising system and that it felt quite production-ready. Not entirely surprising, when you consider that Volkswagen has been working on this since the late 1970s. It came on the market in 1994, when Volkswagen released the Golf III as Ecomatic. The Lupo 3L would also get such a system a little later. In the video below you can see how it worked in the Golf Ecomatic.