Purchased a VW Polo without a test drive: Buying & initial impressions

I checked out the Hyundai i20 N Line & even a used Ford Figo on Spinny but eventually decided to go ahead with the Polo Comfortline AT in Carbon Steel.

BHPian sabareesh10 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Dear BHPians,

I've finally gotten down to penning my post about the first trip with my first car.

Brief history of my car buying journey

For the longest time, I was a staunch proponent of the ride-sharing + self-drive car rental economy and then COVID happened. With that, came the hesitation to share an automobile for fears of safety and sanitation. My wife and I decided to buy a 2 wheeler for personal mobility during the pandemic and all was going well until the day we had an accident due to one of the 65 million potholes in Bangalore! (Yes I counted ). I got away relatively scot-free, but she had a hairline crack on her elbow and was in a cast for a month (poor thing!). With this, we decided that while two-wheelers are great for quick trips to the nearby grocery store or to the gym, commuting longer distances in Bangalore definitely requires a four-wheeler for the purposes of safety and comfort.

And so started ‘Mission Car Kharido’! This was when I really started my journey into the Team-BHP blackhole and boy was I sucked! Went through hundreds of official reviews, ownership threads, long term updates, travelogues etc. I finally ended up narrowing down my options to two cars, the i20 N-Line and the Polo Automatic. My guiding statement during the whole process was “If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right”. In that, if I was buying a car, I might as well buy a car that I’m going to have fun driving around in! Moreover, my dad is the proud owner of a Skoda Fabia 1.6 and I’ve grown up driving that beauty of a car! The car is a little over 10 years old at this point, but the old lady has still got it! She still pulls like no one’s business and is stable as a rock at high speeds. So these two cars seemed like the best driver’s cars in the hatchback segment in India at the moment.

I cued up a test drive for the i20 N-line sometime in January and requested Advaith Hyundai (ORR - BLR) to send over a car home. They promptly obliged and I had a great TD experience with the i20. I was convinced with everything about the car except the sticker price. 15L on-road seemed steep especially for an IC car when the EV revolution seems imminent. I wasn’t able to get a TD of the Polo as VW Whitefield told me that people were picking up the Polos like hotcakes, especially after rumours of the halt in production started surfacing. So they’d even sold out their TD vehicles and I wasn’t too sure of buying a car without at least getting a TD. So, the search went cold for a few months.

One fine day in a discussion over drinks with a friend, I gave him the whole spiel that I’ve penned just above. He pointed me towards Spinny. I’d heard of Spinny through the TBHP forums, but then when this friend told me he’d had a great experience buying a used car from them, I checked out their website and found a < 1 year old Ford Figo AT. While I know it’s not in the same league as the Polo and i20 N Line, the Figo was still in line with my mission statement of being a good driver’s car, albeit from a lower segment. And so, I arranged for the TD the next day and again, had a great TD experience with Spinny. They brought the car home and the executive was super patient and friendly. Also, the car was an absolute breeze to drive in the city, especially in the traffic of ORR BLR (IYKYK). That evening, I had some convincing to do. Not only was I buying a used car, I was buying a used FORD car. They were spooked about bad used car experiences and Ford having packed their bags in India. And so by the time I was done and had everyone on board, it was late the same night. I was about to put down the booking amount for the car that night when I found out that someone else had already booked it and the car was now unavailable! None of the other cars on Spinny at that point convinced me and so I was back to square one. I’d called up my dad the following day to vent my disappointment when he asked me to check with VW again about the Polo.

So I called them again and they said that the TD situation is still the same. There were no cars available for a TD, but there was a Polo Comfortline AT in Carbon Steel immediately available for delivery if I was interested. Once bitten twice shy, I immediately went over to VW and put down a fully refundable token amount to reserve the car. My wife couldn’t accompany me to check the car out when I went to book it and so I wanted to come back with her at a later date for her seal of approval. I am a firm believer in the ‘Happy wife happy life’ theory!

Now the thing with the Polo is that only a driver appreciates the car. For a passenger or non-car nerd, all they see is a 10-year-old car without the bells and whistles that cars from even lower segments offer. This is especially true if you’re looking at the Comfortline variant of the Polo. There are no steering mounted controls, Android Auto / Apple Carplay, driver side controls for the rear windows, cornering lamps, push-button start and the list goes on. And so, when I came back with my wife to see the car, she was underwhelmed, to say the least. It took me all the ‘Negotiation 101’ I learned at B school to get her on board, but finally, she acquiesced. We started the processing and exactly a week after I’d put down the down payment, I had the keys to our car handed over to me by VW Whitefield for our brand new Carbon Steel Polo Comfortline AT. The whole experience with the dealership was pretty smooth; Chetan was my main PoC from the showroom and I had a very pleasant experience interacting with him.

I’d already trawled through the gazillion threads we have on TBHP about the Polo and so I already had a good handle on the key upgrades I needed to make. I got a reversing camera installed at the dealership itself. I upsized from the stock R15 Comfortline alloys to R16 Momo Massimos. I also upgraded the rubber from the stock MRF ZVTV 185/60/R15 to the Conti UC6 195/65/R16. Put in some 3D Kagu mats. Some future upgrades I have planned, are to swap out the Blaupunkt San Marco 370 to the Blaupunkt New York 750 to get Android Auto / Apple Carplay going and a bulb upgrade for the headlamp.

If you’re still reading, thank you for your patience, presenting to you *drumroll* ‘The Grey Baron’!

Our first long drive

During the one week from booking to receiving delivery of the car, I was researching good debut drives to stretch The Baron’s legs when I got the idea of driving down to Wayanad to surprise my in-laws. We were supposed to visit them in January when they came down with COVID and we had to push our plans to meet them. My wife was obviously thrilled at the suggestion and we decided to make Wayanad our first road trip destination!

We drove down here through the Kanakpura highway which, frankly speaking, was a very average drive up until Bandipur. The drive through Bandipur and after through to Kalpetta is amazing! Nice twisty sections with smooth tarmac and pleasure to do in the Polo. I highly appreciate the minimal body roll, good mechanical grip, strong engine, connected steering and the butter smooth TC gearbox! The car is a solid 9 / 10! I am going to dock one point for the creature comforts that it lacks like steering mounted controls, Android Auto, driver side rear window controls etc. But then, humans are such that they get used to their situation pretty quickly and I kind of have as well! I still want to get the HU upgraded for AA connectivity but I have made peace with the rest of the omissions.

I haven’t yet put The Baron through its paces till I break-in the engine, but suffice to say I already love what I see! I will follow up this post with a couple of intra-Wayanad travelogues, but until then, here’s me concluding this one and thanking the community for the wealth of free knowledge they’ve shared and curated here! Wishing you all (and me) thousands of Kms of safe motoring. Cheers!

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