Post by ChrisM on Jul 10, 2022 21:01:10 GMT
Similar to the A1 review I posted recently, I don’t suppose that many on here will be remotely interested in a review of a 6-year old obsolete 5-door supermini but here goes……
Following the A1 issue, I looked round for a decent stopgap car with a few basic provisos: £30 pa or less to tax, cheaper than the A1 to insure, 5-door manual, ideally a supermini as daughter doesn’t like to drive anything bigger and is used to a small car, has hands-free Bluetooth connectivity as she uses her phone a lot …. and ideally not much more than £10k. This seemed to narrow things down to a Fiesta or Polo. A1’s were simply too expensive, no 208’s or Fabias appeared in searches. After a couple of disappointments with Fiestas and Polos being sold the day before I had booked to drive them, I ended up down the road at my local VW dealer where there was a 50,000 mile 2016 Polo Match 1.2 for sale at a little over my budget. With not much else coming up in my searches, I was pleased to be given the keys, told to just take it away and drive it for about half an hour and come back. Fortunately it drove well, and although it had different brands of tyres on front and back, and a few chips commensurate with age there was little else wanting, and the deal was done. Two days after I collected it, younger daughter drove it away and I’ve only recently got it back.
Although it’s finished in dark grey (there was a very limited choice of colour for buyers to pick from, in 2016) it is quite interesting and changes colour to a certain degree depending on how the light hits it. On 15” wheels the ride is softer and more cosseting than the Audi’s (and the Fiesta’s); in many ways it’s a better car than the A1, interior materials are as good as, if not better with parts of the door cards being finished in material against soft-touch plastics in the Audi. The clocks/dials are the same but the central computer display is formatted differently with less information and fewer options, but it has a touchscreen and DAB (the A1 doesn’t although later models did get it as standard) which more than make up for that. The cruise control works in a different way (buttons on the steering wheel against a separate third stalk on the Audi), rear legroom seems better and the boot seems a lot bigger. It even has a space-saver spare against the Audi’s can of gunge.
With “only” 89bhp against 122 it is on paper somewhat slower but in real-world driving it’s almost as nippy, although it can be caught off when in a high gear at low revs and you try to accelerate… the Audi is much more responsive. The taller sidewalls of the tyres make for a better ride and it can take speed bumps a few mph faster than the Audi whilst remaining reasonably comfortable over them, and it seems to handle almost as well, although it rolls a bit more…. very little in it but the Fiesta has them both beaten for fun. You also appear to sit much higher off the road in the Polo making it feel safer and instilling more confidence. However, like the Fiesta, I can’t get my Size 8 past the clutch pedal onto the rest without hooking it round; the Audi has a bigger clearance between clutch pedal and “transmission tunnel” … and the Polo only has 5 speeds to its gearbox (as does the Fiesta) unlike the Audi’s 6 speeds, but the gearing is well thought out and the car will trickle along at 30 in 5th, and not require a change-down if you wish to accelerate to 40 or 50 where the speed limit changes.
The steering is light and almost devoid of feel, again the Fiesta wins hands-down in this department. As with the Audi, speedo is numbered at 20, 40, 60 etc and not 30, 50, 70 that would suit our roads/speed limits better. It’s also very refined to ride in, really quiet (quieter than the Audi to my ears) and you don’t really notice engine noise unless you rev it hard, whereupon it has (to my ears at least) a much more pleasing sound than the Audi’s 1.4 litre lump.
Overall it’s quite a lot of fun to drive in a press-on manner but it doesn’t bring a smile to your face like the Fiesta does…… and the Bluemotion technology brings a pleasant surprise to running costs. It’s giving between 50 and 65 mpg and bearing in mind that my daughter isn’t the most economical of drivers and tends to drive in a spirited manner, and it was she who got the 65mpg out of it on a mainly motorway journey approaching 40 miles in length.
Taking into account the quality of the interior fittings, the way it rides and handles and the equipment levels, it does make you wonder why anyone would buy a Fiesta (or a number of other superminis) in preference to the Polo unless you like a car to be fun to drive and want decent feel in the steering, in which case as almost all reviews point out, the Fiesta wins… but for just about everything else, the Polo is really impressive.
Following the A1 issue, I looked round for a decent stopgap car with a few basic provisos: £30 pa or less to tax, cheaper than the A1 to insure, 5-door manual, ideally a supermini as daughter doesn’t like to drive anything bigger and is used to a small car, has hands-free Bluetooth connectivity as she uses her phone a lot …. and ideally not much more than £10k. This seemed to narrow things down to a Fiesta or Polo. A1’s were simply too expensive, no 208’s or Fabias appeared in searches. After a couple of disappointments with Fiestas and Polos being sold the day before I had booked to drive them, I ended up down the road at my local VW dealer where there was a 50,000 mile 2016 Polo Match 1.2 for sale at a little over my budget. With not much else coming up in my searches, I was pleased to be given the keys, told to just take it away and drive it for about half an hour and come back. Fortunately it drove well, and although it had different brands of tyres on front and back, and a few chips commensurate with age there was little else wanting, and the deal was done. Two days after I collected it, younger daughter drove it away and I’ve only recently got it back.
Although it’s finished in dark grey (there was a very limited choice of colour for buyers to pick from, in 2016) it is quite interesting and changes colour to a certain degree depending on how the light hits it. On 15” wheels the ride is softer and more cosseting than the Audi’s (and the Fiesta’s); in many ways it’s a better car than the A1, interior materials are as good as, if not better with parts of the door cards being finished in material against soft-touch plastics in the Audi. The clocks/dials are the same but the central computer display is formatted differently with less information and fewer options, but it has a touchscreen and DAB (the A1 doesn’t although later models did get it as standard) which more than make up for that. The cruise control works in a different way (buttons on the steering wheel against a separate third stalk on the Audi), rear legroom seems better and the boot seems a lot bigger. It even has a space-saver spare against the Audi’s can of gunge.
With “only” 89bhp against 122 it is on paper somewhat slower but in real-world driving it’s almost as nippy, although it can be caught off when in a high gear at low revs and you try to accelerate… the Audi is much more responsive. The taller sidewalls of the tyres make for a better ride and it can take speed bumps a few mph faster than the Audi whilst remaining reasonably comfortable over them, and it seems to handle almost as well, although it rolls a bit more…. very little in it but the Fiesta has them both beaten for fun. You also appear to sit much higher off the road in the Polo making it feel safer and instilling more confidence. However, like the Fiesta, I can’t get my Size 8 past the clutch pedal onto the rest without hooking it round; the Audi has a bigger clearance between clutch pedal and “transmission tunnel” … and the Polo only has 5 speeds to its gearbox (as does the Fiesta) unlike the Audi’s 6 speeds, but the gearing is well thought out and the car will trickle along at 30 in 5th, and not require a change-down if you wish to accelerate to 40 or 50 where the speed limit changes.
The steering is light and almost devoid of feel, again the Fiesta wins hands-down in this department. As with the Audi, speedo is numbered at 20, 40, 60 etc and not 30, 50, 70 that would suit our roads/speed limits better. It’s also very refined to ride in, really quiet (quieter than the Audi to my ears) and you don’t really notice engine noise unless you rev it hard, whereupon it has (to my ears at least) a much more pleasing sound than the Audi’s 1.4 litre lump.
Overall it’s quite a lot of fun to drive in a press-on manner but it doesn’t bring a smile to your face like the Fiesta does…… and the Bluemotion technology brings a pleasant surprise to running costs. It’s giving between 50 and 65 mpg and bearing in mind that my daughter isn’t the most economical of drivers and tends to drive in a spirited manner, and it was she who got the 65mpg out of it on a mainly motorway journey approaching 40 miles in length.
Taking into account the quality of the interior fittings, the way it rides and handles and the equipment levels, it does make you wonder why anyone would buy a Fiesta (or a number of other superminis) in preference to the Polo unless you like a car to be fun to drive and want decent feel in the steering, in which case as almost all reviews point out, the Fiesta wins… but for just about everything else, the Polo is really impressive.
