The Volkswagen Polo turns 50!
February 2025
As part of a well-considered campaign by Volkswagen in the 1970s to expand its range of passenger cars, the first Polo hatchback was launched in 1975, a year after its larger sibling, the Golf, became available.
The first-generation Polo, which shared its architecture with the Audi 50, measured 3.5 meters in length and weighed only 685 kilograms. Powered by a 29 kW 0.9-litre petrol engine, this compact hatchback achieved a claimed top speed of 132 km/h. The car’s designer, Hartmut Warkuß, remarked at the time, "It has nice proportions and clear lines, which makes it convincing and self-explanatory. This is a design which will still work for years to come. It is comparable to a picture that would still make sense upside down! It is a nice car."
So popular would this Polo prove that by the time the fifth-generation car arrived, it offered Volkswagen Group Africa the ideal opportunity to rekindle the spirit of the Citi Golf by repackaging the outgoing model into the nameplate that still tops monthly passenger car sales in our market, the Polo Vivo.
The 2010 World Car of the Year, the fifth-generation Polo provided an ideal platform for a second-generation Polo Vivo once the production of the current Polo Mk6 began at Kariega.
On the eve of this important model’s 50th anniversary, Volkswagen has sold more than 20 million examples of Polo to date. Currently the sole global supplier of Polo GTI and responsible for all Polo units for the South African, European and Asia Pacific markets, within Plant Kariega’s 2024 record year for production, 131 485 new Polos were shipped from South Africa.
Known internally as Typ 86, by 1979, Volkswagen had produced the 500 000th unit of the popular Polo.
Volkswagen Group Africa investigated bringing the Polo nameplate to South Africa after the third-generation car broke cover globally in 1994. Introduced as the Polo Playa and assembled at the brand’s world-class Kariega plant near Gqeberha, these units were based on the SEAT Ibiza of the time. Because this Spanish-sourced cousin of the actual Polo was built on Golf Mk2 underpinnings, it allowed for the adoption of a range of locally developed fuel-injected engines and the introduction of a sedan derivative known as the Polo Classic.
The South African market would get its first taste of the “official” Polo with the 2002 launch of the fourth-generation package. With its distinct round headlamp design, this generation would spawn a 110 kW Polo GTI, a potent 1.9 TDI derivative and, in 2007, the popular Cross Polo.
