TEN YEARS YOUNG

Does a new engine in a decade-old car justify the level of interest the new(ish) Polo has been receiving?

- SIRISH CHANDRAN

WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT IS A ten-year-old car. That’s the brutal truth and you are fully justified in griping about being saddled with a car first seen in 2010, while the rest of the world got a completely new Polo two years ago. And to continue with the real talk, we are unlikely to get a new Polo for at least another two years. This is it. Like it or lump it.

I like it!

Oh no, not the fact that we have an old car. There’s nothing anybody can say to sugarcoat that fact. But I do have a soft corner for the Polo, particularly since the editors of this magazine were the first to build and rally it in India, and I took the small VW to its first INRC victory. We’ve raced it, rallied it, lived with it, taken it on some crazy adventures, and it has always put a big smile on my face.

That smiley theme continues with this new engine. To meet the new BS6 engine norms, the old 1.2-litre TSI engine has been laid to rest and in comes a new 1-litre unit that continues to get direct petrol-injection and turbocharging. This is an all-new engine, now with three cylinders, displacing exactly 999cc, and is from the same family that won the International Engine of the Year award in 2018. Going forward it will be the mainstay of the Skoda-VW Group in India and will be fully localised by the time the SUVs on the MQB-A0-IN platform (VW’s Taigun and Skoda’s Vision IN) are ready to roll out. In fact, the first time I experienced this motor was in the lovely little Up GTI, and that means the bar is already raised rather high for this (kinda) new Polo.