CarBrandLogos archive · Volkswagen · 1975

VolkswagenPolo

The Audi that became a Volkswagen, and then stayed for fifty years.

Photo: © M 93 · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

The story

A defining chapter in Volkswagen history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Volkswagen Polo, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1997 Volkswagen Polo 5-door hatchback 01

Origins

The Polo started life as somebody else's car. Audi had developed a supermini, the 50, launched in 1974; Volkswagen needed something below the Golf and had no time to design one, so the 50 was rebadged, simplified and given a lower price as the Polo in 1975. The Audi version was withdrawn within a few years, comprehensively outsold by its cheaper twin.

1997 Volkswagen Polo 5-door hatchback 01 · OSX · Public domain

Design and engineering

From the second generation of 1981 it became a Volkswagen design in its own right, most memorably in the squared-off estate-like body that Britain knew as the breadvan. Successive generations tracked the Golf's development one size class down — better refinement, more equipment, progressively more structure and weight — and by the fifth generation of 2009, which won European Car of the Year, the Polo was substantially the car the original Golf had been.

1999-2001 Volkswagen Polo GTI · TTTNIS · Public domain

In production

GTI versions have run alongside the mainstream models for decades, and the car has been a mainstay of Volkswagen's plants in Pamplona and South Africa. It is not a car anyone tells stories about, which is largely the point: it has been quietly competent for half a century, and remains one of Europe's best-selling superminis.

1999-2001 Volkswagen Polo GTI rear · TTTNIS · Public domain

At a glance