Fast Facts

Verdict:
If this stays in this price bracket, the Japanese brands here have good reason to get worried

Great design, excellent build quality inside, dual-clutch gearbox works great

Gear ratios a little too tall, thus slightly slower acceleration

The previous generation Volkswagen Polo wasn’t exactly hotcakes, so will this one with its aggressive marketing hype be successful?

By Andy Hum

JUST A FEW years ago, if you were to tell someone that they could get a really good-looking, well-built European car for around the same price as a Honda Jazz, they’d probably advise you politely to cut down on the booze.

But things are a little different today. If someone refuses to believe you on that, well, they probably have had their beer goggles on too long. Just look at the new Polo.

It sports a new dual horizontal-striped grille, which is part of Volkswagen’s Head of Group Design, Walter de Silva’s grand plan. He’s also the man who gave us the Audi A5, which he described as the most beautiful car he has designed. And now, he’s the guy who’s penned a stylish, affordable car whose design would, once upon a time, probably only be seen on a car that costs twice as much.

Aesthetics, though, isn’t the be all and end all when people buy a car. What’s inside is equally important and the Polo hasn’t forgotten that. It now even has Volkswagen’s seven-speed Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) and disc-brakes all around, which continues a key selling point of the Polo – good value for money.

After all, 11 million people can’t be wrong, said local Volkswagen reps when they presented the new Volkswagen Polo at Sentosa. And looking at the figures, that the car’s population has nearly doubled in the last 10 years, it’s hard to disagree.