Auto Design

Life for the Volkswagen Polo has never been easy. It is an old story: when your big brother is a world-champion, nobody pays attention to you, even if you too are a champion. or almost. The story of the VW Polo is not written with bold letter in the motoring books, yet it has done pretty well, even when it was sold at too high price not to take away sales from his big brother, or is it a sister? its highness, the Golf.

I think it is time to give the new Polo the attention and the respect it deserves, and forget the Golf. Once and for ever. If one has to make reference to another car to put it in some perspective one has to consider the kings and the queens in its market segment: the B segment, in Europe. It rivals? The Fiat Grande Punto, the Ford Fiesta, the Opel Corsa, the Peugeot 207, the Renault Clio.

In the past, when compared to them the Polo looked different from them all. More than cool, it was frozen cold. Rational and efficient, well engineered and to the point it was ready to do its job but it was not emotional.

Not many people would want to buy simply because they liked its looks. Let  me be clear onthis point: not that its look was not good. It bodywork came with an excellent design but it was far from being emotional and, let’s face it, the VW brand has never been famous for emotional cars. Now this is changing, since Walter de Silva has been asked by Martin Winterkorn to make sure that the new VW comes with the best of Italian design flavour and German engineering precision, we have seen more character and a new personality in the latest Golf and Scirocco. This is even more obvious with the new Polo.

…. to be continued…

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