Thursday 4th December 2014

Volkswagen Polo GTI facelift: Review

Formerly warm, now definitely hot - Polo GTI driven with new 192hp 1.8 and... a manual gearbox!

---

"We're bringing Gran Turismo handling to life!" proclaims our VW-badged host in front of the assembled journalistic throng. Bold claim, backed up by video of a sliding Polo on a race track. And while it might look similar to last year's model, under the skin there are some serious changes.

Sensible pants silver five-door one option

Boasting a clear paper advantage in both outright power and economy, it's hard to argue against the replacement of the wonderfully complex 1.4 TSI motor with the simpler and bigger 1.8 TSI. The geeks within us might mourn the passing of a production turbo/supercharged motor but the turbo'd 1.8 in this Polo is really quite something.

In a seemingly bizarre move, the turbo bolts directly to the head, eliminating the exhaust manifolds completely. It's something we've seen before in Fords, the reasoning being the water jacket can flow around the exhaust gasses to cool them before the turbo. Because cooler is denser, and the turbo will spin faster. Or something. Although it's probably a bit duller than that, being more about EU6 warm-up emissions and harnessing the heat of the exhaust to heat the cylinder head and water quicker. And what about a cracked manifold? That'll be a cracked head now...

Or a rather more hot hatch worthy red three-door

Eight injectors, four cylinders
The other big move is one that's slightly backwards. We're all familiar with the technology of direct injection, right? Injecting the fuel directly into the cylinder head at incredible pressures might give a cleaner burn and better efficiency, but owners of early Sciroccos and Minis might have another story to tell. Because the crankcase breather still recirculates the oily mist back into the intake. And without fresh solvent (your petrol) flowing over the valves, they get gummed and coked up. This means compression drops, economy and power suffer, and the point of direct injection is rendered moot. It's not a problem that will show in the first year, but it will eventually.

But now the Polo has eight injectors, four upstream of the valves and four directly into the cylinder head. Petrol through the valves isn't just good for cleaning up the engine in the long-run though, it's also a great way to smooth the delivery when mapped correctly. And the tuners of this world will love having an extra set of more accessible injectors to play with too.

Was DSG only, now a manual option too - yay!

What trickery is this?
But the biggest step backwards is the manual gearbox. Getting a seven-speed DSG for 'free' might have been a very practical benefit of the previous model. But it left the luddites and the purists wanting.

Now the base model comes with a six-speed manual (DSG is a £1,200 option), and while its final drive ratio might be a little long (65mph in second!) there's no arguing with the tactile pleasure of selecting your own ratios. It's a typical VW shift, albeit slightly tighter and shorter than you might expect in a Golf. Although the latest iteration of the DSG system is even sharper and better than ever (take note Renaultsport) it's the manual that really makes the Polo fun again.

Fun in the sun
Yes, we said it, fun. In a class shared with the Clio 200 Turbo and Fiesta ST, this little GTI needs all the help it can get.

Dale, heading off for some more understeer

Delivering second gear to the wheels and pushing the pedal to the floor will get things moving rather quickly. Add some steering angle from the new electric rack and the wider, 17-inch wheels with 215-section rubber, will struggle to contain it. The overwhelming sensation is that you're driving a little hatchback with just a little bit too much power.

And that's great.

On the twisty Valencia back roads, the little Polo is a riot of boost and cornering fun. The oh-so-smooth power delivery starts slow, but surges into boost with a whopping mid-range capable of dispatching several slow-movers in a single overtake.

Our test car, optioned with the Sport pack, has a button proclaiming exactly that. Apart from piping in extra synthetic sound (ugh) it does transform the 'good' standard suspension into 'excellent' sporting suspension by switching between two very different damper circuits. Crashing and bouncing also increase dramatically in Sport to remind you to turn it off, assuming the fake engine noise hadn't forced your finger already.

At least the cabin's top notch though

The steering wheel is a thing of beauty too, especially the version devoid of control buttons. In proportions it's similar to a Nardi from the 90s. It's better finished than the Porsche 911 Turbo's. Really. And the feel from the electro-mechanical steering is beyond reproach.

From the chequered and bucketed cloth seats, to the stomping stereo and fully featured navigation and dashboard. The Polo is such a step up from the competition that it's easy to see why it's the expensive option. It's pure hot-hatch luxury.

Eins, zwei, fun Polizei
Ah yes, those five laps of Valencia's Circuito Ricardo Tormo. We almost didn't mention them. A beautiful track full of twists and turns. It sits in an amphitheatre capable of seating over 100,000 screaming MotoGP fans.

It was a pleasure to drive on such hallowed ground, but it's not the place to make the new Polo feel good. Sorry, VW.

GTI in name and now nature too

Because this is no Clio, and it's certainly no Peugeot 208 GTI 30th. At medium to high speed, with the heaviest of flicks, followed by the deftest application of opposite-lock, it possible to maintain a tiny slide without computer intervention. But the automated fun police are always ready, even when the amber light says ESC OFF.

Indeed, the Polo's natural response to 95 per cent of the circuit is tyre squealing, rubber burning understeer. Cut loose mid-corner with that brawny new motor and even the standard-fit, brake-pad destroying, XDS+ ESP-based 'differential' won't contain the resulting tyre torture.

VW might have shown us video of skidding cars with PlayStation-generation catchphrases, but that's not the reality. The reality is that the new Polo GTI is a fun, quality-feeling, hot hatch in direct competition with other fantastic hot hatches. Can you feel a group test coming on?

Orders start this month with deliveries in March 2015. Prices should start from £18,800.

A lap in the Polo GTI - features *some* understeer...

---

VW POLO GTI
Engine: 1,798cc 4-cyl, turbocharged
Transmission: 6-speed manual, front-wheel drive
Power (hp): 192@4,200rpm-6,200rpm
Torque (lb ft): 236@1,450rpm-4,200rpm
0-62mph: 6.7sec
Top speed: 147mph
Weight: 1,272kg (EU)
MPG: 47mpg (claimed)
CO2: 139g/km
Price: from £18,800

 

[V8 FOU]

But, sorry, nearly 1300kg? In a Polo?

Otherwise looks pretty good.

[tomcrowther]

200kgs heavier than my mk3 golf! porky little car but it does look good, aside from the front bumper which doesn't tickle my pickle.

[epom]

tomcrowther said:

200kgs heavier than my mk3 golf! porky little car but it does look good, aside from the front bumper which doesn't tickle my pickle.

haha I just looked at that bumper and thought jeez that's nice. On the weight issues we seriously need to stop comparing them to older models, it just won't happen (unfortunately) with all this safety gubbins. Having said that I do remember the MK3 getting stick for being portly. A re-map and that car would certainly move some.

[Soupie69uk]

I think I would pick one of these over a Golf GTI.

Hopefully the R is nice step up as well.

[WCZ]

only 50kg ligher than the mk5 gti which had 200bhp

still a great car though

[court]

Lets hope they've done something with the awful crashy bouncy suspension that was on pre-facelift model. A 'junior Golf GTI' it never was.

[Frimley111R]

How do they make such a good car with absolutely zero street cred?

[xRIEx]

bks to this, where's the Polo R?!

[ajprice]

epom said:

tomcrowther said:

...aside from the front bumper which doesn't tickle my pickle.

haha I just looked at that bumper and thought jeez that's nice.

The bumper looks similar to the Seat FR models with the centr intake like that.

[GroundEffect]

Yeah, you lot might want to relearn your physics if you think cooling down the exhaust flow before the turbo is a good idea.

Heat = energy. You don't want to take energy out of the flow, that's what the turbo is for.

Your 2nd guess is correct, it's all about fast warm up. The cold side of your cylinder head is relatively cool and the 'hot side' doesn't actually get that much heat because of how quickly the gasses reach the manifold.

So, if you can have a water jacket in the manifold, you get a lot more of that heat extracted to boost the coolant temps and get the rest of the system hotter, faster.

Good for heater performance too!

[HarryFlatters]

xRIEx said:

bks to this, where's the Polo R?!

My thoughts exactly.

[Killer2005]

xRIEx said:

bks to this, where's the Polo R?!

With their successes in WRC with the Polo R, you'd have thought it would be along soon enough.

[ManOpener]

So, it's a great steer, well built and appointed, decent ride, good fun if a little over-safe for track work, IMO pretty good looking, as well cheaper than at least some of the direct competition if you go on list price.

Really does sound quite appealing, though given the amount of current competition in the small hot hatch market and the "success" of the last two generations worth of Polo GTI, I can't actually see them selling many.

Which is a shame as it sounds pretty decent.

[mackay45]

Frimley111R said:

How do they make such a good car with absolutely zero street cred?

That might appeal to some though, the silver 5 door one actually looks really good IMO.

[xRIEx]

Killer2005 said:

xRIEx said:

bks to this, where's the Polo R?!

With their successes in WRC with the Polo R, you'd have thought it would be along soon enough.

They did a FWD limited edition Polo R WRC a year or so ago.

I think a proper R was being touted by PH and Auto Express back in April for a 2015 launch but still no official word. Maybe they wanted to flog the Golf R as much as possible without the risk of cannibalising sales, maybe it's not coming at all

[tomcrowther]

ajprice said:

The bumper looks similar to the Seat FR models with the centr intake like that.

i think it suits the Seat more, however i don't like how much it recesses the closer it gets to the floor!

[CoolHands]

Isn't this basically the same size weight and power of what used to be called golf gti's?

[Catatafish]

CoolHands said:

Isn't this basically the same size weight and power of what used to be called golf gti's?

yes, and heavier still than some of the previous gen golfs.

Sounds like an unfinished product if it's 95% understeer when pushing on.

[Mark Wibble]

GroundEffect said:

Yeah, you lot might want to relearn your physics if you think cooling down the exhaust flow before the turbo is a good idea.

Heat = energy. You don't want to take energy out of the flow, that's what the turbo is for.

Indeed- follow this logic to an extreme and jet engines will work much better if you cool all that nasty hot air back down to ambient before it reaches the turbines! If there's any benefit at all, I'd imagine it's in terms of tuning the engine characteristics, maybe with slower-moving denser air the turbo can be optimised for more of the rev range i.e. is more effective at lower revs. Not useful for max power chasers but gives a more flexible power curve.

Which deletion of the exhaust manifold will help with too, and surely "cracked manifold" does not equal a cracked head?! What you've done is simply remove a component that is prone to failure...

[GroundEffect]

Mark Wibble said:

GroundEffect said:

Yeah, you lot might want to relearn your physics if you think cooling down the exhaust flow before the turbo is a good idea.

Heat = energy. You don't want to take energy out of the flow, that's what the turbo is for.

Indeed- follow this logic to an extreme and jet engines will work much better if you cool all that nasty hot air back down to ambient before it reaches the turbines! If there's any benefit at all, I'd imagine it's in terms of tuning the engine characteristics, maybe with slower-moving denser air the turbo can be optimised for more of the rev range i.e. is more effective at lower revs. Not useful for max power chasers but gives a more flexible power curve.

Which deletion of the exhaust manifold will help with too, and surely "cracked manifold" does not equal a cracked head?! What you've done is simply remove a component that is prone to failure...

It's a misnomer to say that the manifold is removed. It's still there, in what it does (collect the gasses from the 4 cylinders) but it's now part of the head. We call them IEM - Integrated Exhaust Manifolds. And yes, if it does crack, it does mean a new head...but the reason they would crack was due to extreme heating which now isn't such an issue, given they're cooled. As long as the flow across them was calculated correctly...

At lower load/lower rev points, having further cooled flow (exhaust gas temps at really low load/low rpm can be as little as 350C) will only hurt. Boost threshold is typically dictated by how well you can tune your turbine geometry, compressor geometry and naturally aspirated engine characteristics.