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18/05/2009
By EWAN KENNEDY
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When it was launched late in 2008, Volkswagen's sixth-generation Golf received a lot of praise for its refinement, body rigidity and comfort. Now the German giant has moved the same technology down to Golf’s little brother the Polo. Riding in a Polo is now more akin to driving in a Golf, possibly even an older Passat model, thanks to numerous NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) measures. The result is likely to be a Polo that sits very high in the prestige stakes within its class.
 Safety also figures highly in the VW, with the company confident that it will achieve the maximum five-star rating when New Polo is tested by the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) in a few weeks time. Yet the body is lighter than before thanks to a strong emphasis on weight reduction in all areas during the complete design process.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that the latest Polo is approaching older model Golfs in its dimensions. That's the way of the automotive world these days, partly because extra length is needed in the frontal areas of cars to allow them to meet ever-toughening crash regulations.
Style-wise, the Polo shares a lot of its themes with the Golf 6, particularly around the front end. You wouldn’t call either car wildly exciting to look at, but that's the German way and the neat shape is likely to remain up-to-date as the years pass.
At the same time as the body has been fully revised, new-generation engine technology has been introduced. This has reduced fuel consumption and emissions by a remarkable amount, the new Polo being up to 20 per cent more fuel efficient in one model. That variant, the Polo Blue Motion diesel, consumed just 3.6 litres per hundred kilometres when tested on the combined European cycle, which translates into just under 80 miles per gallon in the old measurements. Modern car technology just keeps on getting better.
Those figures are for an extreme economy model with relatively low engine power, but even the remainder of the Polo range has managed drops in fuel consumption ranging from eight to fifteen per cent.
Petrol TSI and turbo-diesel TDI engines are on offer in various capacities and these are teamed to full-manual and/or DSG double-clutch gearboxes.
 Final Australian specifications and prices for the new Volkswagen are yet to be set and will be announced closer to the release date. However, the PR chief at Volkswagen Group Australia, Karl Gehling, says that only models with the option of a DSG gearbox are likely to be on our import list. Which makes sense because the DSG has most of the advantages of a full automatic transmission, yet has more performance than a full manual, with the real bonus of using less fuel at the same time.
The launch in Australia is more likely to take place in early 2010 than late this year as had been originally been hoped. Polo is only just being introduced to the European market as we speak and seems likely to be in high demand over there, thus getting early imports to Australia could prove difficult. |
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