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Cape Town - Cape Town traffic is terrible. Scratch that, it's horrendous. Many Capetonians often work late to 'miss' the bumper-to-bumper stream of heavy traffic.
I found myself stuck in the proverbial 'parking lot' albeit behind the leather steering wheel of the new Volkswagen Polo. Our test unit was fitted with the 'Beats' pack but more on that later.
What stood out from the two-day test?
Undoubtedly it was how the soon-to-be very popular hatchback went about its business where it'll spend a lot of its time - in stop-start city traffic. The five-speed manual gearbox is light and a springy clutch action sorta made me forget I was trawling along Philip Kgosana Drive in peak hour traffic.
The 1.0-litre turbocharged engine with 70kW suffers from lag, so dropping down to second gear is inevitable to extract the low-down torque, of which there is a maximum of 175Nm.
The 'Beats' model we had on test has a thumping sound system, and why wouldn't it? It's fitted with a 300-watt sound system from US audio speciliast 'beats' (by Dr. Dre). Millenials, the Polo's target market, will know who he is.
It comes to the party with an amp and a sub (in the boot obviously). Don't fret, there's enough for the full-size spare wheel. The system is impressive, provides good sound clarity but also a proper 'skop' from the subwoofer.
The dark hue of our test unit adds quite a bit of class to the package, and with the new car being bigger and wider it's definitely more comfortable.
The suspension soaks up the bumps and the damping feels almost Golf-like. The Polo Beats is priced at R277 200.
Despite my short stint with it, I raved to anyone I could find about it. The Polo has grown up and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
