Volkswagen Polo 1.2 70 PS SE

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Report by Graham Whyte

Plus ca change, as Frenchmen say, when they are totting up the Euros in their pockets. It can also mean 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. Never is that more true than in the motor industry. Despite the apparent onset of climate change, and the need to ameliorate our carbon footprint, man is at heart a power freak; and car manufacturers continue to churn out gas-guzzling giants while the planet goes to pot.

For example, only last week I was testing a car with a V12 engine, which develops 500 PS and a peak torque of 1000 Newton-metres. But I have made up for it this week: just three cylinders, 70 PS, and 112 Newton-metres. Oddly enough, both cars do 70 mph and are made by the same company. Welcome to the giant Volkswagen Audi Group.

You might well think that swapping overnight from a V12 diesel Audi Q7 to a diminutive petrol-powered Polo would be something of a culture shock, yet it is less so than you might imagine. For sure, the £100,000 Audi has a few more toys, and a lot more cubic feet, than the Polo, but the same attention to detail and quality is evident in both cars.

And, of course, I am referring to the new Polo - the Mark V - which goes on sale this month (October 2009), some 34 years after the launch of the original Polo, back in 1975: the year that Margaret Thatcher defeated Edward Heath in the Conservative party leadership election, Lord Lucan was found guilty of murdering Sandra Revett, and Vauxhall launched the Chevette. It seems like the Polo has been around for ever, and it has, but it's not a car you notice, so well does it blend in with middle England, its natural habitat.

In 2007, Volkswagen produced the 10 millionth Polo, and with a track record like that, the new car has to be especially good. And it is. Not especially exciting ('Thank goodness for that', I hear you ladies say in Midsomer), not especially emotive, but especially good - in a typically Volkswagen small-machine-on-wheels sort of way.

New throughout, except for some of the engines, the Mark V Polo reflects the penmanship of Walter de Silva, late of SEAT and responsible for the iconic Leon Cupra 225. More than ever resembling the Golf - you might even call it a Golf Lite - the new Polo is larger, yet weighs less, than the car it replaces, and consequently is more fuel-efficient.

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