Archive | Polo 1975-1981

26 April 2025 ~ 0 Comments

Beaulieu Simply VW event to celebrate 50 years of the Volkswagen Polo

Volkswagen Polo at Simply VW 2024, Beaulieu (Credit: Our Tim YouTube channel – youtube.com/@OurTim)

The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu will celebrate 50 years of the Volkswagen Polo at its popular Simply VW event on 25 May 2025, with a special anniversary display, and there is still time to make your Polo part of the festivities.

All Polo owners are invited to take part in the special anniversary display on the arena, whether cars are 50-year-old original models, or one of the next five generations – all are welcome.

To take part, you’ll need to buy your participant tickets and email events@beaulieu.co.uk with the following information to book your space in the line-up:

  • Vehicle make: VW
  • Vehicle model: Polo – please indicate which generation
  • Name
  • Contact details – telephone number and email address
  • Any special vehicle details or requirements.

Participant ticket prices are only valid if arriving in a Volkswagen and displaying a vehicle within the event. They are not valid for those arriving on foot and must be for persons arriving in the display vehicle, which requires one participant ticket per person. Enough tickets must be bought to cover all the occupants of that vehicle.

Please note that participant tickets are not valid for additional persons not arriving in a relevant vehicle. Up to 9 May, advance ticket prices are £16.80 for adults, and £8.50 for children. After this date, entry costs £18.50 and £9.00 respectively.

Volkswagen Polo at Simply VW 2024, Beaulieu (Credit: Our Tim YouTube channel – youtube.com/@OurTim)

Notable event
The Simply VW event is held on 25 May 2025, from 10am-5pm, and entry includes admission to all the Beaulieu attractions, which includes The National Motor Museum. With around 600 VWs of all types in attendance at previous shows, it promises to be a notable event in the VW show calendar.

In addition to seeing the cars on display, participants have the opportunity to be chosen as the winner of the People’s Choice Awards, selected by public vote. Prizes are awarded to the winner and two runners-up. Club displays are also welcome, and if you would like to reserve an area for your club to park together within the event, email events@beaulieu.co.uk. At least 10 cars are needed to qualify.

Find out all the details about the Polo 50th anniversary display and the Simply VW event itself at beaulieu.co.uk/events/simply-vw. We will be there, and it would be great to see as many Polos in attendance as possible, to celebrate the car’s milestone birthday in style!

Volkswagen Polo at Simply VW 2024, Beaulieu (Credit: Our Tim YouTube channel – youtube.com/@OurTim)

The Simply single-marque shows form just part of Beaulieu’s busy events programme. Alongside the Simply VW show, there are similar events for owners of Aston Martins, Audis, BMWs, Fords, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches, Smarts, as well as French, Italian and Japanese cars.

There are also the famous autojumble events, this year held on 17-18 May and 6-7 September, where hundreds of stalls offer the chance to pick-up all sorts of motoring bargains, curiosities, and memorabilia. Head to beaulieu.co.uk/events to see Beaulieu’s comprehensive 2025 events programme.

All images: Our Tim YouTube channel.

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16 March 2025 ~ 2 Comments

16 March 1975: Volkswagen Polo presented to international media

press presentation

If you’re here, you’re probably aware the Volkswagen Polo celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, and today marks another important date in its history. The first-generation Polo was presented to the international media from 16-22 March 1975, following the beginning of production not quite two weeks earlier.

The international press presentation and driving event was staged in Hanover, 55 miles west from Volkwagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters. We like the idea of tens of brightly-coloured Polos whizzing around the streets of the Lower Saxony capital city – the scene would be similar to this footage of the August 1974 Audi 50 press launch in Sardinia – and venturing out onto the vast and empty autobahns to cruise flat out at a top speed of 82mph…

1975 Volkswagen Polo international press presentation

Volkswagen’s smallest model in its new wave of water-cooled cars was also on show at the 48th Salon de L’Auto Geneve – the Geneva motor show – having been unveiled there on 13 March 1975. On display until the show’s end on 23 March, a gleaming Marino Yellow Polo L took centre stage on an underlit revolving platform, with a few others scattered about around it. This fantastic video shows some rare footage of the event, and doesn’t our star of the show look fabulous?

1975 Volkswagen Polo press presentation pack

In this 50th anniversary year, we’ll have more posts on notable dates and models, but for now, head to our heritage pages to learn more about the history of the Polo, and in particular, how the first-generation Polo arrived as a cut-price version of the Audi 50, outliving its more expensive relative by four years. Happy international media presentation birthday, Polo!

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05 March 2025 ~ 0 Comments

5 March 1975: Volkswagen Polo production begins

1975 Volkswagen Polo

The Volkswagen Polo celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, and there is a reason to celebrate today. On 5 March 1975, production of the Polo began at VW’s Wolfsburg plant. The almost identical Audi 50 was already rolling off Wolfsburg’s production lines, having been launched in August 1974.

Volkswagen’s headquarters site at Wolfsburg would be the sole production home of the Polo until 1984, when the small VW began to be assembled in SEAT’s plant at Pamplona in Spain. This became the site most synonymous with Polo production, the last model coming off the lines in July 2024 after a 40-year run.

The picture above is said to be one of the first, if not the first, image of the new small VW of the Seventies, and the car that completed Volkswagen’s then-new water-cooled line-up. The Polo wouldn’t be seen in public until its launch at the 1975 Geneva motor show around two weeks after the start of production, but the car had been mooted to arrive for several months before. In a synchronistic twist, Volkswagen will unveil the concept version of its ID 1 electric car later today, which, like the first-generation Polo, will be the smallest car in the Volkswagen family.

In this 50th anniversary year, we’ll have more posts on notable dates and models, but for now, head to our heritage pages to learn more about the history of the Polo, and in particular, how the first-generation Polo arrived as a cut-price version of the Audi 50, outliving its more expensive relative by four years. Happy production birthday, Polo!

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26 January 2025 ~ 0 Comments

Volkswagen celebrates 50 years of the Polo at the Bremen Classic Motorshow

1975 Volkswagen Polo L and 1977 Volkswagen Polo hillclimb car

Further to the announcement of the start of its celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Polo, Volkswagen has released more details of the cars that will be on its stand at the upcoming Bremen Classic Motorshow, from 31 January to 2 February.

The Oceanic Blue Polo L has already appeared in Volkswagen’s press release announcing that the company is marking five decades of its evergreen supermini, but it will be joined by a rare hillclimbing Polo, dating from 1977. We’re unsure as to whether the car is owned by Volkswagen Classic, but whoever’s car it is, excitingly, it’s an early Polo we’ve not seen before. A racer for around 20 years, the Bali Green motorsport machine underwent a two-year restoration before it took to the track again in 2022 at the Osnabrück hillclimb, an event which forms part of the FIA International Hill Climb Cup.

1977 Volkswagen Polo hillclimb car

Touch of menace
Devoid of any massive spoilers, the wheelarch extensions really pop against the Polo’s simple
and beautifully drawn lines. The front air dam adds a touch of menace, while inside, although the flock-covered dashboard is (barely) recognisable as that of a first-generation Polo, the tough-looking roll-cage points to this Polo’s non-road car life. Other nods to motorsport include the 107bhp, 1300cc engine – almost as much as an early Polo Coupé GT G40, and nearly double that of the 1979, 60bhp Polo GT – and a top speed of 94mph (believe us, that’s more than enough in a first-generation Polo!). Its lowered ride height – compare the headlamp heights of it and the standard Polo in the first image – and body addenda also give it a much tougher stance.

1977 Volkswagen Polo hillclimb car

In contrast, the Polo L looks delicate and elegant. This car is from 1975, the first year of Polo production, and this is also recognisable by the colour. Restored by Volkswagen Classic for the launch of the sixth-generation Polo in 2017, it is a perfect example of an early model in more deluxe L-specification, which included chrome-plated bumpers, side trim and door insert strips, and VW grille badge, as well as reversing lights, a two-speed fan blower, full carpeting – the basic Polo made do with full rubber matting – and a passenger sun visor. Power came from a four-cylinder, 37bhp 895cc engine. Even with a weight of just 685kg, performance was best described as ‘leisurely’. Top speed was 82mph.

1975 Volkswagen Polo L – Volkswagen Classic

Increased popularity
Launched as the final piece of the new water-cooled Volkswagen jigsaw, the Polo followed the Passat, Scirocco, and Golf to market, although had appeared the year prior to its debut as the Audi 50. While the small Audi died a quiet death in 1978, the Polo’s better sales and increased popularity ensured it lived on, but few could have predicted it would still be here 50 years after it arrived. With more than 20 million sales, it must rank as one of the most popular small cars ever, so it’s very pleasing it will see its time in the spotlight online and at events during 2025.

Both the Oceanic Blue Polo L and the hillclimb Polo will be star attractions on the Volkswagen Classic stand – D08 in Hall 5 – at the Bremen Classic Motorshow from 31 January to 2 February. One of the most important events for classic vehicles at the beginning of the year, the show usually attracts numerous visitors from all over Europe. Around 50,000 visitors are expected to take in the classic car atmosphere this year.

Volkswagen 50 Years of Polo anniversary brochure

For those not in attendance, we hope that Volkswagen brings the cars out once more. And if you can’t venture to northern Germany next weekend, then Volkswagen has produced a celebratory brochure marking the Polo’s big milestone: download here. Further materials can be found in the Volkswagen Newsroom.

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19 January 2025 ~ 0 Comments

Volkswagen Polo cookie giveaway to brighten Blue Monday

2025 Volkswagen UK Polo cookie giveaway

Volkswagen UK is looking to banish the winter blues and get the Polo’s 50th anniversary year off to a sweet start by offering Polo-shaped cookies on social media ‘Blue Monday’, which in 2025, falls on 20 January.

To be in with a chance of receiving one, all you have to do is to leave a comment on any of Volkswagen UK’s social media platform accounts – Facebook, Instagram and TikTok – on 20 January stating which Volkswagens make you smile (no guessing which one it would be for us…). A limited number of free cookies are on offer, with winners being selected at random.

All of the iced Polo cookies are designed, made and supplied by online baker Luluz Treats, and the giveaway is open to entrants aged 18 or over and who live in the UK; full terms and conditions are on the relevant Volkswagen UK social media platform accounts.

Volkswagen states, ‘Blue Monday is said to be one of the most depressing days of the year, because it coincides with dark winter days, post-Christmas money worries and the failure of many people’s new year resolutions. It usually falls on the third Monday of the year, which this year is Monday 20 January.’

‘It’s only three weeks since most of us were enjoying the warm post-Christmas glow and also celebrating the start of 2025, but the winter blues are making all that feel like a distant memory for some people,’ said Fiona Jones, social media manager at Volkswagen UK. ‘We hope our cookie giveaway helps to alleviate that and spreads a little Polo 50th birthday joy this January.’

If you want a Polo cookie – and come on, who doesn’t! – look out for the giveaway posts on Volkswagen UK’s Facebook, Instagram and TikTok social media accounts.

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