James Ruppert Mint Polos of all shapes and sizes
Volkswagen’s enduring supermini makes a shrewd used buy
For £3000, I can buy a 2008 Polo 1.4 Match with 64,000 miles
Iunderstand that there is a brand-new Volkswagen Polo to get excited about. I don’t pay that much attention to what’s brand new, but I can guess that it is a lot of percentages better than the previous one when it comes to emissions, structural rigidity and something else very important. The truth is that real car buyers – usually the ones with the budget to buy used – only worry whether it will break down or not. Simple as that.
We like Polos in our neck of the woods, be they bread-van-shaped Mk2s from the 1980s or the 2008 Mk4 parked outside. Our experience with what was the Teenager’s Toy Car and is now the Arrogant Yoof’s Runabout has been sensationally positive. Ongoing mystery water ingress aside, it has only gobbled up the usual consumables as a regular commuter car. It makes sense, then, to look at just what is on offer, especially as they will be flooding the market as part-exchanges rather soon.
Let’s bag a cheapie first. The Mk3s are still around in decent numbers and looking rather solid too. Mostly, these are with private sellers who are debating whether to do the scrappage scheme tango. For just £350, and appearing in an ad in some very average mobile phone pics, is a 2000 CL with 76,000 miles, which seems like good value.
How about something more modern? Steer clear of the 1.2-litre three-cylinder engine, which sounds and feels like a washing machine on the final spin cycle. Awful. Let’s stick with the diesels and 1.4-litre petrols. Up the budget to a reasonable £3000 and I can buy a 2008 1.4-litre Match with 64,000 miles that’s identical to the one we have parked outside. They don’t seem to have lost very much money in the past three years, which is comforting.
I don’t think diesel is quite dead yet and, as controversial as this might not be, Volkswagen makes rather fine oil-burners. A 2010 1.6-litre TDI SE with 60,000 miles at £5000 seems rather tempting. They look great and you really should get 60mpg if you are careful. That is, of course, the boring option.
What we want is a GTI, and with £6995 to spare, there are a bunch of 2011-2012 Dsg-equipped examples from 60,000 miles up. You do have to shop carefully and there are a lot of white ones, but the colour suits the shape.
The more sensible petrol buy, if you are going to plod about in a Polo, might as well be a late-model TSI. A 2015 1.2-litre TSI SE with around 30,000 miles is £9500. That starts to sound like quite a pricey Polo.
So does the Yoof want any of those? Course not. She needs something far more exciting in her life with an R or Type R on the end.