Polo R road car once again on ice due to limited sales potential
We thought we’d heard the end of the story, but the Polo R rumour book has opened again, although once more, it’s not good news. Recent reports state that the road-going Polo R was to be based on the limited edition, 252bhp left-hand drive-only Audi A1 quattro. That car costs £41,020, which would certainly price a similarly-expensive Polo out of the market. Volkswagen has reportedly realised this, admitting that the number of potential buyers for the car would be very limited. The Polo GTI only makes up 1 per cent of Polo sales in the UK.
‘Producing a Polo R road car is one possibility, but we need customers for such a car. Maybe it is easier for Audi than VW to market a powerful, all-wheel-drive city car,’ Volkswagen’s board member for development, Dr Ulrich Hackenberg, has reportedly stated. ‘If we make a Polo for WRC homologation, then that makes sense. But in the basic Polo, we don’t have the customers to make a R version of the car,’ he continued. A Polo R road car would make sense from a WRC marketing point of view, but for now it appears as unlikely as ever.
