Slide Parade

Hardly Anything Bringing the New Xuv3oo and Polo Together? Think Again...

- Raunak Ajinkya

A simple Google search will show you just how serious the Polo has been to Volkswagen in rallying. A simpler search will show you just how thankful Sebastien Ogier is to the Polo R WRC, because it brought him a stupendous amount of fame and credibility. This isn’t to discredit the inherent talent and hard work that Ogier has put in over the years, but it wouldn’t be too long a shot to suggest that the driver is but half the component of the formula that thrives and dominates.

To put it into context, Ogier managed thirty-one rally victories and four consecutive driver’s championships between 2013 and 2016. Being a relentless workhorse comes naturally to the Polo R WRC car, then. Unfortunately, its WRC entrant was decommissioned at the end of 2016 due to, um, well, unavoidable circumstances that I won’t go into detail here, but the fact remains that Volkswagen had built a brutal winner, and then some. And then, we have the Mahindra.

A simple Google search will show you just how serious the XUV nameplate has been to Mahindra in rallying. A simpler search will show you just how thankful Gaurav Gill is to the Super XUV, because it brought him a stupendous amount of fame and credibility. This isn’t to discredit the inherent talent... well, you get the point, I’m sure.

What, then, am I trying to ram home here? The Polo you see on these pages is but a regular road-going example of the R WRC-spec that got it accolade after accolade, and the XUV300 is nothing more than a scaled-down version of the timid (in comparison to the Super XUV) elder brother. What gives?