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The Polo with a built-in rally feeling
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Black and white: Volkswagen has put the Polo R on its wheels. So far, there are two prototypes that the company sent to icy Lapland for a practical test…has. The powerhouse left behind on snowy ground thanks to his…
Source: Volkswagen
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… 250 hp two-liter turbo engine with four cylinders and all-wheel drive with Haldex clutch made a lasting impression on the test drivers.
Source: Thomas Geiger /-
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White on white: The Wolfsburg-based company painted the second prototype in the camouflage color of the mountain hare. Our author also liked the car when it hit the hook. It is less noticeable… the Polo R im…
Source: Volkswagen
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…Cockpit. Except for 280 km / h on the speedometer scale, the displays in the prototype are so simple that nothing indicates its rally qualities. The buttocks also hold up on the outside…lo R…
Source: Thomas Geiger /-
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… rather back – apart from the roof spoiler and the double-flow tailpipe. It is currently questionable whether the muscle man will make it into series production.
Source: Volkswagen
With all-wheel drive and 250 hp: the Polo R pushes so hard that it does credit to a world rally champion. But the car from the VW family is only a prototype. This could change soon.
S.ebastien Ogier knows what you can get out of a polo. The young Frenchman has just won the WRC World Rally Championship with the upgraded rally version of the small car from VW. But if you are not exactly a professional like him and are one of the regular drivers in the VW team, you have had to make do with significantly less engine power in the Polo.
Ogier’s company car is estimated at around 315 hp, while the series Polos that anyone can buy ends at 220 hp, which the special “WRC” model produces. And instead of all-wheel drive as in the professional Polo, the power of the 2.0-liter engine is only brought to the road via the front axle. And: With a torque of up to 350 Newton meters, the front-wheel drive is almost reaching its limits.
It is possible that Volkswagen will still turn the performance screw a little for private customers. Encouraged by the WRC success and the hope of more importance for the in-house R GmbH, the Lower Saxony are flirting with a power polo that could come a lot closer to the racing car. Two prototypes of the Polo R already exist. The car has 250 hp and above all: all-wheel drive.
A cracker that goes off
And he drives. On its first ride, the little cracker is full on the road, it brings its power through all wheels neatly to the bottom. It is true that the Polo prances with its power on the straights as nervously as an overbred racehorse. But then he shows his qualities. As soon as the gearbox has sorted itself and the profile has meshed with the road, the little one goes off as if driven by jet power: it can go from 0 to 100 km / h in well under six seconds, a top speed of 250 km / h? no problem.
There are still just these two copies of the Polo R available. And the series implementation seems difficult due to technical hurdles. For example, Volkswagen has so far not had all-wheel drive on the shelf for the Polo series. A Polo R could possibly be the fourth generation Golf R Compete. But the proof that the two-liter fits under the hood of the smaller one has been proven. A Haldex clutch, which regulates the flow of power to the rear axle, has also been implemented in the small car.
A decisive boost in motivation could come from Ingolstadt. There the Polo brother A1 is currently being upgraded to the S1. With 210 hp, it has a little less engine power than the VW prototype, but like all S models it has four-wheel drive as a Quattro. The A1 is based on the Polo platform, it would be conceivable that Audi would return the favor and contribute the all-wheel drive to the Polo R..
Series production? Not clear!
One will have to wait and see. But if VW continues to chase through the WRC so successfully, then there will soon be one or the other fan who would make the estimated possible purchase price of 35,000 euros for such a car easy. So it is quite possible that Monsieur Ogier and his colleagues will soon no longer be the only ones allowed to drive such a potent Polo with that extra portion of grip.
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