BICESTER BRAKE-UP
Charlie takes the Polo on a 200-mile round trip. Then wishes he hadn’t…
CHARLIE CALDERWOOD
I was initially excited when editor Simister chucked me the keys to our little VW. I love 1980s superminis, especially ones from the upper sections of the range that actually have a decent-sized engine, like our 1.3 Polo. Some 200 miles later, however – much of it in pouring rain – I had decided that I won’t be driving it again until we have done some serious work on it. Yes, it was that bad.
In the tradition of every junior manager’s handbook, I’ll start with the positive, however – namely that engine. VW rarely make a bad one and so it proves in the Polo, with the 1272cc unit doing a good impression of Wolfsburg’s masterful EA827 (of Golf MkI and MkII fame) in miniature; it provides flexible power and is happy to rev, even if it sounds a bit dull.
The car also handles much better than I was expecting it to. I can’t help but compare the Polo to the 205 that I owned a year ago, given that they were contemporaries, and the Polo is probably the equal of the 205 in terms of outright cornering ability – no faint praise. The Polo hangs on, even on wet roads, far better than I expected it to and the rear end feels more settled than the Peugeot’s, though it doesn’t ride quite as well as the 205 while providing such enjoyable road manners.
Still, the Polo reminded me of why I love cars like this so much, and has certainly left me with a hankering to get something similar into my garage once more.
You don’t have to spend long with our Polo to notice that the brakes feel off, however. Now, I know that many right-hand-drive VWs of this era don’t always have the best brakes, the reason being that VW was lazy with the RHD conversion and didn’t move the master cylinder across, relying instead on a far from ideal linkage system. However, my old Scirocco MkII had that selfsame set up, and while its brakes never impressed, they did at least feel safe.
Despite the work that David has had done on the Polo’s brakes, however, I’m sure that they’re still not as VW intended – very little happens beyond halfway on the brake pedal and the car pulls to the left under full pedal depression. The offside front clearly isn’t working and I think that the inconsistency of the brakes is because the rear drums are being asked to do more than they’re supposed to – once the weight transfers to the front, they do even less.
Long story short, I was soon wishing that I hadn’t taken the car on such a long journey, particularly when the rain set in and my stopping distance seemed equal to that of a 1950s lorry.
To add insult to injury, I also discovered that the door mirrors fold in at motorway speeds. This is normally easy to work around thanks to the car’s excellent visibility, but much more difficult when the side windows fog up in the rain. Obviously there’s no demist on the Polo’s massive rear windows, so I was forced to stop at a petrol station to buy some anti-mist solution to rub onto the windows.
My sanity may well have returned after that point because I had regained some over-the-shoulder visibility, but the windscreen wipers’ constant screeching as the stiff old rubber juddered over the windscreen saw off what little fortitude I had left.
Suffice it to say that I was glad when it was all over. I certainly won’t be taking the Polo out again until the brakes have been fixed, the door mirrors secured and new wiper blades fitted.
I can’t be too smug, of course, because the very reason why I had to take the Polo to Oxfordshire in the first place was that the Galant can’t be trusted at the moment, having lost all of its power steering fluid last week…
‘Suffice it to say that I was glad when it was all over…’