This December, I had the opportunity to make the VW Polo 70kW Life my daily driver and take it on a cross-country road trip that spanned just under 4,500km.
While I did spend seven days with the hatchback back in early 2022, this isn’t nearly enough to familiarise oneself with all its vices and virtues.
For this, you have to spend a decent amount of time with it, or at the very least, rack up a bit of mileage behind the wheel.
While the Polo is still a car I can endorse to all hatchback buyers, there are a few quirks that you must be aware of should you be considering it for your next set of wheels.
What I liked
The designers of the Polo hit the proverbial nail on the head, as the look of the hatch is one of my favourite aspects.
The pronounced horizontal surfaces and lines lend all versions of the VW an athletic demeanour, a far cry from the bulbous silhouette of the first-generation Polos. From some angles, it looks stout and aggressive, from others more relaxed and forthcoming, but there are no perspectives from which it is unstylish.
It also has the perfect proportions to be spacious inside the cabin while still compact and easily manipulatable with the steering wheel.
Another ace up the Polo Life’s sleeve is that it has a generous standard kit.
The essentials are all covered, including automatic LED lights and wipers, 15-inch alloy wheels, a leather multifunction steering wheel, a 6.5-inch infotainment system with smartphone mirroring, a multi-layout digital driver’s display, cruise control, front and rear parking sensors, hill-start assist, ABS with brake assist, and front, side, and curtain airbags.
If you want more there is an extensive list of optional extras at your fingertips, too, but be weary as they can rapidly add to the final window sticker and before you know it, you’ll have a half-million-rand Polo to pay off – but I’ll get to that later.
There are just a number of finer details present in the Polo that have you wondering why none of its competitors have done this before.
When driving, it has “Eco Tips” that tell you how you can improve fuel economy, for example by changing to a higher gear or closing the windows if the aerodynamic drag affects consumption more than what an airconditioner would.
When switching it off, there are reminders on the central display that warn you not to forget your phone inside the car and to make sure that everyone is out before locking it. I can imagine the latter being useful for new parents who aren’t used to having a baby in the backseat yet.
The seats of the Life also have height adjustment and lumbar support as standard, thus allowing passengers of all shapes and sizes to find their ideal position and to be comfortable for extended periods of time.
Knowing that many drivers resort to filling up their cupholders with keys, cards, and change, VW built a special storage area for each of these, too.
There is a small recessed pocket just behind the cupholders that is perfectly suited to hold a key, there is a cardholder in front of the gear shifter, and there are several coin slots in the glove compartment to keep them away from prying eyes and hopefully save you from having to replace a window or two.
The dash isn’t just a smooth patch of plastic, either. It has an intricate trigonometric pattern that seems to be stretched from the middle to the edges of the panel to avoid the drab look that is so often found in the Polo’s rivals.
These small touches go a long way in improving the quality of life inside the hatch, but you wouldn’t think of them until you are presented with them.
What I didn’t like
My first and biggest, not exactly a problem, but concern, is the Polo’s price.
It wasn’t long ago that you could buy one of these for around the R200,000 mark, I vividly remember looking at buying a brand-new Polo Highline in 2015, with a sunroof and all, for just R225,000.
But now, even the cheapest one starts at R348,200, and the “Life” trim which is one click above the base model, is R391,100. This quickly climbs once you start looking at the optional extras.
Want a sunroof? That’ll be R15,400. The reverse camera retails at R5,550, and the Safety Package that includes goodies such as adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist can be yours for a minimum of R13,500.
Once a budget-focused hatchback intended to introduce students and young professionals to the VW brand, the Polo is now playing the role that the Golf used to with its premium aesthetic and matching price tag, while the Golf – which is exclusively sold in GTI and R specs in our market – is teetering on the verge of unattainable for the majority of South Africans.
This is probably one of the reasons that the Polo regularly missed being in the top 10 best-selling cars in the country in 2023.
Sure, the more basic Polo Vivo was introduced to take the place of the now-mid-range Polo, but it, too, already starts at a relatively hefty R259,400.
In VW’s defense, inflation and rand depreciation are inevitable in our economy, but as a locally-produced car in a country where price is put first and foremost, it should be a priority to keep things affordable or you’ll rapidly see your competitors catch up.
Glitchy software is another thing VW has been catching flack for in recent years, and things still aren’t perfect.
The infotainment system itself is intuitive and friendly to use, peculiarly, though, throughout the three weeks of travels, it crashed and restarted itself at random no fewer than six times. In three of those instances, it required that I go through the setup wizard and configure the main settings again.
One possibility is that the touchscreen could have been unhappy in the scorching African sun but as far as I could see, there were no obvious causes for these system failures.
The last quarrel I have with the Polo is the fact that it still does not have wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto as standard – this is a paid-for extra that costs R20,800 even if you’re buying the top-end GTI at R543,600.
This may not bother all of you out there, but spending three weeks with the hatch consistently getting the cable entangled with the gear shifter, or with the parking brake, or with a bottle in the cupholder, or with my leg, or a combination of these things on a daily basis, just reaffirmed my anti-cable agenda.
Not to mention having to remember to take the cord out of the wall charger in the morning, to remove it from the car again at night, and to unplug it every time I get out in public or risk ripping the cable out of its socket and potentially damaging the USB connector or my phone.
It should’ve been a crime to have “wired” smartphone mirroring in any vehicle built in the last five years given that we have Bluetooth and even Wi-Fi in them, and while you can still get it in the Polo, I am of the opinion that it should’ve been standard across the range, not a pricey option.
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