VW Polo vs Ford Fiesta
VW Polo vs Ford Fiesta £18,180 (£22,450 as tested) vs £17,714 (£19,315 as tested)
WE SAY: CAN VW’S LATEST POLO GET ONE OVER ON OUR FAVOURITE SUPERMINI?
Why do we buy anything other than a supermini? This Fiesta Titanium has cruise control and anti-crash braking. It’ll watch your blind spots, read road signs, warm your backside, heat the steering wheel, broadcast crystal-clear digital radio while navigating via satellite, defrost its windscreen and beep at you before you back into a wall. And it’s not even fully specced. But it’ll need every single trick and fourish to take down the new VW Polo.
This Titanium with 123bhp is £17,714, and just over £19k with the toys. A Polo SE L manual is £18,180, but its stronger residuals mean our third party fnance calculator rates the VW cheaper to lease (£235 per month plays £251). Both achieved a respectable 44mpg.
Inside, they’re curiously similar. Both shun virtual dials, plumping instead for superbly clear instruments bookending a central data screen. The Fiesta’s is multicolour (to the Polo’s monochrome) but cluttered. When you look left, there’s an 8in touchscreen in your eyeline, with the vents relegated to nipple-height. This means the climate controls have to live by your knees, which is another win for the Fiesta, because its bigger, more juvenilelooking switchgear is less of a fddle.
Hate modern cars with touchscreens that look like lost iPads foating in midair? The Polo’s neat, dash-integrated housing will appeal. The fush gloss black panel it lives in is a fngerprint haven. Lower down lives your rubberised cubby with wireless phone charging. Below that, the central tunnel is fashioned from horribly brittle plastic. So, place anything that’s not a cup in the teeny cupholders (spare change, a charging cable, loose M&Ms, et cetera), and it rattles. Irritating.
The Fiesta uses some naf trim too: the doorhandles in particular, which isn’t clever when you touch them a damn sight more often than you’ll fondle the pillowy upper reaches of the dashboard. But it’s so much tidier than the old car.
Its touchpoints – steering wheel, gearknob, softer, comfer seats (everything except the brittle handles) are high quality without being overdesigned. The touchscreen is – at last – a Ford system that doesn’t