The Rinspeed Advantige R1 is a single-seat concept car from Rinspeed, the Swiss design house founded by Frank M. Rinderknecht in 1979. Its engine runs on kompogas, a biogas fuel, and the car was built as an experimental study rather than a production model.
Rinspeed Advantige at a glance
| Maker | Rinspeed Inc., Switzerland |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1979, by Frank M. Rinderknecht |
| Type | concept car, design study |
| Seats | one |
| Fuel | kompogas (biogas) |
| Show debut | Geneva Motor Show |
| Body | futuristic aluminium-bodied sports car |
| Production | none, a one-off study |
The sources mention the Advantige R1 only briefly, as one item in the list of Rinspeed concept cars; the rest of the page describes the company and its show cars from the same source.
History of the Rinspeed Advantige
Rinspeed Inc. was founded in 1979 by Frank M. Rinderknecht, and by the 1980s the company had become the exclusive Swiss importer of AMG and AC Schnitzer vehicles. Rinspeed became known above all for launches at the Geneva Motor Show: the first was a turbocharged, modified Volkswagen Golf GTI with a squared grille and headlamps, followed in 1981 by the Aliporta, a heavily modified Golf with gullwing doors similar to those of the DeLorean.
Through the 1990s and 2000s Rinspeed kept building heavily modified and unique concept cars, including futuristic aluminium-bodied sports cars such as the R Roadster and the single-seat, kompogas-powered Advantige R1. The same period produced a Bugatti EB110 called the Cyan and a two-door, low-roof Porsche Cayenne, and the company continued to show new studies at Geneva almost every year.
The Advantige R1 belongs to that experimental line. Rinspeed used such cars to try out materials, fuels and body shapes that would have been too expensive or too unusual for a production programme, and the single-seat layout with a biogas engine is typical of the company’s approach: take a familiar sports-car idea and change one fundamental thing about it.
Design and features
- Single seat: the cockpit is built for the driver alone, without a passenger seat beside it.
- Kompogas fuel: the engine runs on biogas rather than petrol or diesel, a fuel Rinspeed used in several of its studies.
- Aluminium body: the car belongs to the company’s line of futuristic aluminium-bodied sports cars.
- Show car, not a product: the Advantige R1 was built to demonstrate an idea at a motor show.
Rinspeed Advantige versions
- Advantige R1: the single-seat, kompogas-powered study described in the sources.
- R Roadster: the other aluminium-bodied sports car of the same period, a two-seat design.
- Rinspeed concept series: the Advantige sits alongside later studies such as the Splash, sQuba, iChange and UC.
The Advantige R1 is one of many studies from the same workshop: see the Rinspeed Senso, which reads the driver’s mood, and the amphibious Rinspeed Splash. The whole series is collected under Rinspeed.
Sources
- Rinspeed, English Wikipedia: company history and the Advantige R1
