£1000 Challenge VW Polo
Our Polo beats Storm Dennis to make its first classic show appearance – but how did we get on with hunting for spares?
1992 VOLKSWAGEN POLO 1.3 CL THE STORY SO FAR
Miles driven 286
Total mileage 48,930 What’s gone wrong Nothing – and no fuel smells, either!
DAVID SIMISTER Normally, the tried and tested way to tweak an old VW is to kit it out with some tasty alloys and lower it by a couple of inches – but if anything I’ve wanted to go the other way recently.
Our K-reg Polo had made it to its first classic show in our custody – the Dubfreeze show, held at Bingley Hall in Staffordshire – but the 97-mile journey involved nearly three hours of A-road motoring at exactly the moment Britain was bearing the brunt of Storm Dennis. Forget BBS alloys and ‘stancing’ our VW; that morning my imagined list of upgrades included knobbly off-road tyres, Wolfsburg’s Syncro four-wheel-drive system and a raised air intake nicked straight from our colleagues over at Land Rover Owner magazine.
Even in standard-spec, JMA proved happy enough dodging the occasional fallen tree on the patchwork country lanes making its way over from The Fens to the showground in Staffordshire, and while my recollections of taking our old Reliant Robin out in this sort of weather consisted mainly of wrestling the steering wheel to keep our old three-wheeler in a straight line, the little VW brushed off the crosswinds, sitting resolutely in the outside lane with the rep-driven Audis and BMWs. In fact, the only thing it couldn’t deal with was a stretch of the A52 under two feet of flood water – a couple of trucks attempted it, but I turned our car around and opted for the 20-minute detour instead.
If anything, the fuss-free trip reminded me why I’d taken our Polo to Dubfreeze in the first place; it’s a great opportunity to go shopping for VW spares, and having just spent the journey listening to the gale-force winds a few inches from my right ear, I was keen to see if anyone had a set of door seals suitable for our car.
Frustratingly, I didn’t have any luck. Nor did I have any joy tracking down a secondhand driver’s seat to replace ours, which has trim damage and has lost much of the padding in the offside bolster. I did find a couple of VW trimmers who might be able to repair ours – but our £1000 Challenge adventures are about enjoying these cars on a budget, and I suspect that it’ll be cheaper to source a used seat rather than retrim the original.
So, did I leave empty-handed? Not exactly; while I didn’t manage to find any door seals, I did spot a specialist at Bingley Hall whose day job is replacing electronic keyfobs for much newer VWs, but also stocked keyrings that match our Polo’s delightfully 1980s key, its plastic hollowed out to incorporate a metal VW logo.
For just £3 I couldn’t resist, and it ends the (admittedly minor) gripe of our Polo not having a manufacturer keyring to complete the set of three keys that came with the car.
Small victories, and all that. At least our car’s been to its first show. Hopefully it’ll have its new bits fitted before the Stanford Hall VW Show.