50 years of the VW Polo: boyhood dreams come true
The little Polo has had a great career. To mark its 50th anniversary, VW celebrated with a review of six Polo generations and made a boyhood dream come true.
After almost three decades on the job, you think you've made up your mind - and then this little guy from Wolfsburg comes along and tattoos away my objectivity. Driving a police car at last! Blue lights on, siren on - and then do a few laps of the cordoned-off area with a big grin on my face.
The 1992 Police Polo of the Berlin police force is a treat for the 50th anniversary of a model that once helped save VW. At the beginning of the 1970s, VW was on the brink of ruin. Wolfsburg had relied on the Beetle and co. for too long and missed out on modernity. The first Golf (1974) alone would not have achieved the turnaround. So VW reached for the shelf of the DKW brand, which had only been purchased in 1965 and renamed Audi: the Audi 80 became the first VW Passat in 1973. And the Audi 50 with the VW logo on it became the Polo. A hit: over 20 million Polos in six generations since 1975.
The measure of small cars
Today, the Polo is the benchmark for small cars and the current Polo VI is a full-size vehicle at 4.07 meters. That wasn't always the case: on a test drive in the oceanic blue Polo I - base "L", 45 hp, 683 kilos, 3.50 meters long - we feel vulnerable behind cardboard-doored doors and stand in the way of 40-tonne vehicles overland. The Polo III from 1994 - the one that was also available in four color combinations 3806 times as the colorful "Harlequin" - still feels good even after 21 years. Which shows how modern it was. The rest is history: the Polo became cooler, more beautiful and stronger.
The Polo as a "wolf car"
VW even brought cars that never existed to the anniversary. We drive the only Polo V R WRC Street with all-wheel drive (2013) and the legendary Polo G40: still cool today with a G-charger and 115 hp. VW advertised it in English as the "wolf car". And we marvel at prototypes such as the Polo II Sprint from 1983, with a G40 four-cylinder boxer with 155 hp in the rear! And what will follow today's Polo VI (currently also available as a special "Edition 50" model from CHF 34,800)? A study of the future ID.2 electric speedster was recently shown. Rumor has it that the Polo name will somehow live on.
