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Jaggy Bunnet's Cars - August 2011
Volkswagen Polo GTI
Hoots Mon! And Plenty of Them
There’s something honest about the Volkswagen Polo GTI. I mean, you buy a car with 178 bhp’s worth of performance and you can pretty much use it anywhere. On the other hand, if you buy a Golf R with the power of 266 horses you immediately become much more limited, unless you go to Knockhill and pay your multi-quids for a track day experience.
I’ve always liked small cars for that reason. Especially small performance cars, because having paid your money you can actually extract maximum value from it. It’s one thing driving a Polo GTI flat out along a twisty section of B road, quite another if the car has twice the number of horses threatening to throw you over a hedge.
And that’s the whole point. It’s all about value. You get your money’s worth with a small car, but it’s easy to feel short changed when you buy a big car like a Porsche 911 or a Jag XKRS, simply because you can’t really open it up. Unless you own a private track, go to track days or know ‘the beak’ when you get hauled up for speeding, there is no way in this 70 limited land of extracting maximum value and horsepower from your supercar. In other words, these cars are for posing, not for driving.
On the other hand, you can thrash the wee Polo to your heart’s content without endangering your licence (too much!) and without endangering other road users.
Car enjoyment is not just about speed, it has as much to do with handling. It’s about getting through a corner on the limit of a car’s performance (as opposed to your own performance) and coming out the other side with a smug sense of self satisfaction and a big smile.
I always feel that in cars with twice the power and handling you get a sense of disappointment because there are damn few stretches of public road where you can exploit the potential. That’s because you never know what’s around the next blind corner It could be a pot hole or a pot bellied pig, or it might be a herd of raw leather still on the hoof or a John Deere badge - attached to a huge green Hulk sized combine harvester.
So, yes, I liked the Polo GTI. Apart from the minty name, I really liked it. It was a hoot. It’s even more of a hoot when you think that all this power and performance comes from a 1390cc engine with two juice squeezers attached to it. The first one of the pair is engine driven, squeezing the air into the combustion chambers, and then shuts down as the other one squeezes even more into it driven by a hamster wheel powered by exhaust gases. Unlike the Yanks, the Germans have overcome their desire to counter everything with ever bigger engines (well, up to a point) and instead used their engineering expertise to get a quart out of a pint pot.
The result is a permanent grin. It scoots from corner to corner like Jerry with Tom on its tail, and if you get a bit of bumpy or undulating tarmac, like the Lang Whang from Carnwath to Auld Reekie, you can get it skipping like a stone from apex to apex.
The suspension takes up most of the bumps, but when it reaches its limits, the wee car just digs in harder. That’s down to the 17 inch Dunlop Sport Maxx 215/40 tyres as much as the suspension, but together they ensure that your spine is still in one piece when you reach the cobbled streets of the Royal Mile – unlike some other suspension/tyre combinations I could name!
The steering is a delight too. Informative and tactile, and aided by the perfectly crafted leather rimmed wheel, and the whole experience topped off by a superb driving position and decent seats. There’s even enough room for the big and burly to fit in comfortably.
And then there's the 7 speed DSG gearbox with the 'Sports' setting and the paddles behind the wheel. Admittedly this one was more hesitant in operation than some I have driven, but that's down to adjustment rather than anything else, so it was a bit jerky when slowing down for junctions and then speeding up again. But as I said, this could be fixed easily. Where it really scores is out on the open road when you can hang on to the wheel for dear life. Two-handed and never lift. Brace your left foot, just flick up and down the 'box with your fingers, and go for it. Magic. Pure magic.
If there is one complaint, apart from the less than butch name, it is the engine. It doesn’t sound like a BDA or a V8, it sounds more like a Kenwood with a dozen eggs and a pancake recipe.
Oh, yes. There is one other complaint. That infernal central hinged arm rest. Despite the number of Volkswagens I have driven over the years and the frequency I have driven them, I still bluidy well forget about it. It gets me every bluidy time. Leap in, fire up, select first, then swing my arm back to get the handbrake – Ouch, ya bugger. Right on the funny bone. Every bluidy time.
The trouble is, even if you fold it down, you have to pull it back up again to pull on the handbrake. If ever there was a case for electric parking brakes (much as I hate to admit it) this is the one.
There is another complaint, or maybe that’s too strong, make up your own mind. This tight wee package comes at a price – 19 grand. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s just because it’s got a 1.4 litre motor, but that seems an awfy lot of money. On the other hand you will get an awfy lot of power and pleasure from it. And perhaps that is the best assessment to use on reaching a decision.
Would I have one? Yup, for sure, but I’d take a hair dryer to the Polo badge, I’m far too butch for a car with a name like that. And of course, I’d need a wee saw – to cut that bleedin’ armrest off.
In Short:
Price: £18,795.00
Engine: 1.4, 4 cyl supercharged/turbocharged petrol engine with 178 bhp
Performance: 0-62 mph in 6.9 seconds, flat out at 142 mph
Economy: 47.9 mpg (combined)
CO2 emissions: 139 g/km
Insurance Group: 30E
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