The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is like little else in motorsport. It's the second-oldest race in the country, giving five years up to the Indy 500. However, this is no circuit race. It's a hill climb, up and across one of the tallest mountains in Colorado. That means exactly one chance to get it right; one run of 12.4 miles (19.99km) that starts at a mere 9,390 feet (2,862m) and finishes above the clouds at 14,110 feet (4,300m).

As part of its Dieselgate penance, Volkswagen is mounting an all-out, all-electric assault on Pikes Peak this June. And, on Monday, the German automaker finally gave us our first look at the car it's going to use: the I.D. R.

A brief history of Pikes Peak

For most of its history, the race was 12-and-a-bit miles of sideways oversteer up an unpaved road to the top of Pikes Peak. With few guard rails to speak of, falling off the road often involved an awful lot of rolling down the side of the mountain, particularly if it all went wrong above the tree line. To set the fastest time of the day therefore required otherworldly levels of car control; this is exemplified in Climb Dance, a marvelous short film about Ari Vatanen's race to the top in 1988:

The other thing that sets the hill climb apart from other major races is how open it is. It's not quite "run what ya brung," but the rules allow a wide enough variety of vehicles to compete. Most entrants ran in one of the production-based classes and still do today. But the fastest way up the mountain is with as little weight and as much power as possible. For many years, that meant something you might see in IndyCar or sprint racing.

By the 1980s, the rallying crowd had cottoned on and started sending increasingly specialized cars to Colorado. With just one run, plenty of high-speed corners, and a thin atmosphere to worry about, Pikes Peak Specials became featherweight creations. Bulbous arches concealed wide wheels and tires, wings grew bigger and bigger, and it was impossible to have too much power, given how much would be robbed by altitude.

I never knew about this twin-engined Golf

I consider myself pretty well read when it comes to oddball factory specials, but I can honestly say that, until I started researching this story this morning, I had no idea VW ran BiMotor Golfs at Pikes Peak.

VW was among the OEMs to give Pikes a go, using its Mk.II Golf. Except, unlike a normal Golf, these cars had an extra engine . In 1985, armed with a pair of naturally aspirated 1.8L engines, the Golf was uncompetitive, but it finished third in class. The following year, the car now used a pair of turbocharged 1.3L engines and finished fourth. With Audi's fearsome Sport Quattro S1 as competition in 1987, VW Motorsport turbocharged a pair of 1.8L engines (from the 16v Golf GTi), then stuck them longitudinally into a tube-frame chassis that resembled a Golf hatchback.

Each engine got its own gearbox, driving one axle. If you're wondering how well that worked in practice, VW works rally driver "Jochi" Kleint explains:

I really had to concentrate hard to ensure that both engines were running synchronously. They did, but the load always changed whenever you shifted down on fast sections. When you regained the throttle response and got back on the gas, there were different engine speeds. You also had to make a conscious effort to straighten the car up as you came out of a corner. You had to take multiple factors into account to drive a car like that.

The 1987 Golf BiMotor weighed 2,315lbs (1,050kg), and, with both engines at full power, produced 652hp (486kW). But Kleint was never able to challenge the Audis, and the car's suspension failed before he made it to the finish line.

Ray Brock/The Enthusiast Network/Getty Images

Ray Brock/The Enthusiast Network/Getty Images

Brian Bahr/Allsport/Getty Images

Andy Cross/The Denver Post/Getty Images

Brian Bahr/Allsport/Getty Images

Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool

Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool

Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool

JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images

Garth Milan/Red Bull Content Pool

Randels Media Group/Revvolution.com, Official Photographers of the PPIHC

They paved paradise (but not with a parking lot)

The 21st century changed the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in a very concrete way. Parts of the road to the summit began to sport asphalt, a process that was completed in 2012. When we visited the race in 2016, I couldn't find a single person who preferred the new road, but that's the nature of progress. With a lot more grip available, the fastest cars started to look more like things you'd see in the paddock at Le Mans, not a special stage on a rally. Tires are slick, and the fastest way through a corner doesn't involve a lurid and spectacular drift. But the wings are still huge, you still can't have too much power, and the very fastest drivers are still the ones with a background in rallying and next-level car control.

In 2013, Sebastian Loeb, Peugeot, and Red Bull got together and decided to completely blitz the record books. The 208 T16 Pikes Peak borrowed its suspension, brakes, and the biggest rear wing it could find from Peugeot's 908 Le Mans winner. A turbocharged 3.2L V6 provided 875hp (652kW), and it weighed just 1,929lbs (875kg). With the world watching—Red Bull livestreamed the entire event—Loeb more than achieved his goal. He reached the finish line in just 8:13.878, more than a minute and a half faster than the existing record (set the year before by Rhys Millen). No one has come close since, and only two other drivers have set times under nine minutes, both in 2016.

Electric cars don’t care about altitude

One interesting development during the past few years has been the influx of electric vehicles (EVs). Unlike an internal combustion engine, an electric motor cares not about partial pressures of oxygen. As long as its batteries are happy, it should make as much power at 14,000 feet as at sea level and all points in between. And with a little over 12 miles to run, endurance isn't an issue. Consequently, the hill climb has become a venue where electric power can take on the internal combustion engine without artificial handicapping.

All manner of EVs have been run up the mountain in the past few years, the fastest of these being Rhys Millen's e0 PP100 in 2016. Millen drove to the top in 8:57.118, but it wasn't enough to beat Romain Dumas and his gasoline-powered Norma. Dumas flew straight to Denver after winning that year's 24-hour race at Le Mans, but neither jet lag nor engine problems in practice could stop him, and he beat Millen's EV by almost six seconds.

Hill climbing had been a labor of love for Dumas. He campaigned the Norma himself when not busy with his day job as a factory racing driver for Porsche's or Audi's sports car programs. But with both those efforts dead and buried, sister company VW snapped up his services for the I.D. R effort.

We still have scant details about the car. But a clue in the press release is the following bullet point: "Electric racer shows sporting potential of the MEB powertrain." VW doesn't elaborate, so we have nothing else to go on, but MEB is the electric architecture that will provide the building blocks for VW Group's smaller EVs, the first of which will be the I.D. and the I.D. Crozz in 2020. How closely related any of the components or software will be to the future road cars probably depends on how much VW wants to win and by what margin.

Listing image by Volkswagen