Recently Volkswagen unveiled their new Polo which looks very similar to the
new face lifted golf which isn’t a bad thing. It has received rave reviews
praising its composure, chassis and calling it the best
small car in some cases!
It is built beautifully as you would expect
with VW, the interior is put together superbly and is most defiantly class
leading. The ride is great and handling is much improved over the old generation polo, it retains the comfort but is a lot more exciting when you want it to be unlike
the older generations which were dire to drive.
So as with the previous generations VW have released a Bluemotion version
which is according to the figures the greenest car in Europe and only emits
87g/km of CO2 much less than even the hailed Prius! It costs £12,000 and comes
with alot of gadgets for the price such as climate control and dvd navigation.
Some of the fuel saving gadgets includes a stop/start system that turns the
engine off when you stop and smoothly restarts it when you push the clutch
down.
It also captures the energy when you brake to charge the battery which
can be found on the newer Audi’s. Along with many other frugal improvements it
means the Bluemotion can achieve 85.6mpg combined. But these
“improvements” do mean that the polo is not quite as capable as its
normal fuel guzzling counterparts. While it is faster 0-60 than the base petrol
with a 0-60 of 12 seconds third and fourth gear is a real drag and you have to
really focus on getting the gear changes just right to get the most performance
out of the car. It also is not quite as a relaxing experience to be in as the
normal polo due to the lack of noise reduction and the car does vibrate
sometimes.
All being said though those are minor glitches when you consider you’re
killing the planet a lot less than everybody else.