- Grown-up driving experience
- Generally user-friendly interior
- Cruise control missteps can annoy
VW’s long-running small car suits buyers looking for solid dependability.
Overview
Volkswagen is a brand with many storied nameplates, and the Polo holds its own against them, having racked up more than 20 million global sales since its introduction in 1975. The current, sixth-generation car has been on sale since 2017, with a facelift in 2021, and remains popular with buyers, placing well inside the top 20 most-registered cars in the UK last year with nearly 25,000 registrations.
The Polo is currently only available as a pure petrol model, with a 1.0-litre engine producing 80PS, 95PS or 115PS, and either five-speed manual or seven-speed DSG automatic transmission. The all-new, electric ID. Polo is due to arrive in dealerships next month – sales of the petrol Polo will continue alongside it for the foreseeable future.
The basic design of the Polo clearly fits with the model’s long running heritage – it’s a shape that’s been evolving very gradually for decades. Disrupting this with our test car’s R-Line trim were some of the more over-the-top fake exhausts we’ve seen on such a modestly powered car – the honeycomb lower front grille does a much better and more proportionate job of adding sportiness.
Despite the high-profile exit of the Ford Fiesta a few years ago, there is still plenty of competition in the ICE-powered supermini market, where alternatives to the Polo include its Volkswagen Group cousins the Skoda Fabia and Seat Ibiza, along with the Peugeot 208 and Toyota Yaris.
Pricing and spec
The Polo is currently available in the UK with Life, Match Plus, R-Line, Edition 50 and Black Edition trims.
Standard equipment with Life cars (priced from £22,310) includes 15-inch alloy wheels, automatic LED headlights and tail lights, automatic wipers, electrically adjustable heated and folding door mirrors and air conditioning, while features of Match Plus trim (priced from £24,185), which replaced the previous Match trim in the Polo range, include 16-inch alloy wheels, keyless entry and heated front seats (it’s the only trim except Black Edition to have the latter).
Sports inspired R-Line trim (from £25,695) gains dual-zone climate control and sporty exterior and interior styling features, while Edition 50 trim (from £27,150), originally introduced last year to mark 50 years since the first Polo, includes 17-inch alloy wheels, matrix LED headlights and a panoramic sunroof. Black Edition spec (from £26,195) adds features such as advanced headlight high-beam control and dynamic range control.
Predictably, given the positioning of brands within the VW Group, the starting price for the Skoda Fabia range is just over £1,000 cheaper than the Polo, and this gap only increases when considering an equivalent spec to our test car, while the Seat Ibiza undercuts the Polo by slightly less, but to a similar ratio. The Peugeot 208 is cheaper than all the VW Group cars as an entry-level model, and retains its advantage against the Polo at an equivalent spec, while the Toyota Yaris is pricier than the Polo – perhaps not surprising since it comes with a full hybrid powertrain as standard.
Related reading: New car review: Toyota Yaris is small and mightily economical
Standard service intervals for the Polo are one-year/10,000 miles, although drivers can instead opt for a flexible servicing schedule, aimed at those who do higher mileages, which will see the car’s on-board computer advising when services are needed. Warranty coverage is for three years/60,000 miles.
Technology
All Polos come with an eight-inch infotainment screen as standard, running the Ready2Discover system with Life and Match Plus trims and Discover Media from R-Line up (the latter also available with a 9.2-inch screen as an option). Alongside the infotainment screen there’s an eight-inch Digital Cockpit display with Life and Match Plus cars and a 10.25-inch Digital Cockpit Pro display with R-Line and above.
In graphical terms the screens are unflashy but perfectly functional and understandable, and while the available infotainment screens are not the largest by today’s standards it doesn’t really compromise useability – there’s a lot to be said for clearly labelled steering wheel control buttons that do exactly what you expect them to, ditto the shortcuts running up the sides of the infotainment screen. If only the slider-based air conditioning controls were so straightforward, since although these are improved from when VW first introduced them they are still fiddlier to use than proper knobs and buttons would be.
Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity are standard throughout the range, as is a wireless smartphone charger.
Safety
Headlining the Polo’s ADAS offering with all but entry-level cars are Travel Assist, which controls elements of steering, acceleration and braking via adaptive cruise control and lane assist, and predictive cruise control, designed to adjust the car’s speed based on factors such as local speed limit information and map data. The latter system is, however, capable of irritating lapses – on a couple of occasions on motorways it reduced our test car’s speed to 50mph when no change of limit had been displayed, and on another occasion it thought we needed to slow to 52mph to navigate a very gentle motorway curve easily doable at 70mph.
Overspeed warnings and lane assist can be switched off should drivers prefer via a menu accessed through controls on the steering wheel.
The Polo’s reversing camera (a £380 option fitted to our test car, standard with Match Plus and Edition 50 trims) is less useful than many due to its guidelines not moving with steering inputs.
The Polo was last tested by safety organisation Euro NCAP in 2022, when it received a full five-star rating, with a particularly strong performance for adult occupant protection.
Driving experience
Maybe it’s a sign of the Polo’s age that you still get an old-school plug-in and twist ignition key and a manual handbrake – we forgot to disengage the latter a couple of times when trying to move off, being used to automatic test cars having electronic handbrakes that disengage automatically.
The 115PS engine we had in our test car offers plenty of poke for a supermini and is refined even under heavy acceleration. With the seven-speed DSG gearbox (standard with the 115PS engine) there’s the option to shift manually via either the gear lever or paddles behind the steering wheel, but we don’t think the shifts are quite quick enough to make this worthwhile.
We averaged 51.3mpg during our test – decently close to the 52.8mpg official WLTP combined figure. Unsurprisingly, the Polo is close on economy to its VW Group cousins, which share its powertrain, but less efficient than the mild hybrid 208 and full hybrid Yaris.
The Polo’s handling gives quite a grown-up vibe that feels focused on solidity rather than entertainment – there’s nothing really wrong in terms of body roll or grip levels, but relatively lazy and uncommunicative steering stops it having the same sense of agility as the best driving small cars. The steering’s lightness does help make it an easy and relaxing car to drive around town, and these qualities are retained up to motorway speeds, where for its segment it’s an accomplished way of swallowing miles.
Ride comfort is fine – a slight edge of firmness can make itself felt especially at lower speeds, but hit a big ridge in the road at higher speeds and the vertical impact is soaked up nicely.
Practicality
For a relatively high-end and sporty trim level, R-Line doesn’t come with much in the way of interior garnish. The doors are mainly covered in scratchy plastic with just a little bit of armrest padding, and although there’s a bit of softer rubberised material on the dashboard, overall it’s a very grey plastic look, though the design which angles the central screen towards the driver is fundamentally sound and we have no complaints about build quality or seat comfort.
Rear legroom is reasonable and headroom good. A 351-litre boot is bigger than those of the Yaris and 208, but slightly smaller than those of the Ibiza and Fabia.
