You wouldn’t have imagined we’d do a Polo do you? Of course the video and article’s title slightly revealed it. But you don’t see a Polo that often. And even less often one that doesn’t have road tax. I’m just kidding, the road tax free Polo is probably the bestselling car in The Netherlands. Yet this one is different. It doesn’t have any have road tax and only 20% of additional tax liability (in The Netherlands). This is a remarkable little bug because it’s the Polo Blue GT. The Blue-part stands for the exterior colour and the fact that it’s very fuel efficient. Bluemotion, slow motion, sounds familiar doesn’t it. Since it’s a 1.4 Turbo TFSI you couldn’t quite call this a slow motion. The biggest questions we need to answer today are:… 1. Are you allowed to drive this car on the left lane?… … and 2. Is it still a good drive and does the GT-part make sense? I’m not kidding when I say this engine is quite nice.It’s the new generation of the good old 1.4 TSI. So it’s got some new features. Like better thermo-management. The heat distribution in the manifold is different, the turbo has been integrated much better,… … the intercooler has been mounted closer resulting in a much lower amount of temperature loss. But most important is that it has “cylinder shutdown”. This means that at times the four cylinder engine only uses two cylinders. When I release throttle the display shows “2 Cylinder mode” and according to Volkwagen this isn’t noticeable. But in fact this isn’t true. If you’ve ever been on an overnight ferry… … you don’t always know if the ferry is still moving when you wake-up. You can find this out by listening if you can hear the humming sound of the engine. With the shutdown of the two cylinders you can hear the same humming sound.But when you accelerate it very swiftly uses all four cylinders again. The system switches off the cylinders when the engine requires less than 100 Nm of torque. This Polo Blue GT simply is very fuel efficient. It drives 22.2 km on 1 litre (13.6 miles on 1l). And this for a petrol engine with 140 bhp. That’s quite good for such a small Polo. The CO2-emission is 103 grams an 108 grams with the manual transmission. We’ve got the seven-speed DSG transaxle. Resulting in quite a good acceleration of 0-100 km (0-62 miles) in seven seconds. It’s like a junior GTI. This also shows on the exterior. It’s quite a bold version with a nice colour and good-looking rims. Nice
roof-spoiler and double exhaust. It simply looks quite sporty and bold. The handling is just fine. It’s nice and quiet and since it’s a VW everything is where it should be. The handling isn’t very sporty. The steering is quite light, which is noticeable when you drive a bumpy road at high speeds. Then you feel your hands going up and down a little bit. The steering could’ve been more stiff. For the rest it does what you expect it to do.Just a tad of understeer at high speeds and the rear will remain nice and steady. Not the most exiting GTI-like version, but entertaining nonetheless. And it’s nice and fast. This without having to pay road tax. As long as I’m not on the left lane and you’re not bothering me… … then we tolerate the Blue GT to drive there. The official price hasn’t been released yet. But it’ll lay around 20.000 Euros. Probably a bit more. This give it its own niche: a small hatchback with 140 bhp. Of course, there are hatchbacks which are more powerful and faster. But these are more expensive and do require you to pay road tax.And also have an additional tax liability of 25%. But if you’re a little bit wiser this is the better option. .
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