VW Polo Blue Motion
By Russel Bray
With the price of fuel, which is mainly tax, heading towards the stratosphere and no prospect in sight of a fuel price protest to force a Government rethink it’s easy to feel gloomy. Especially with all that oil going to waste from BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico. But if you are in the market for a new small car or are planning to downsize you could cut your motoring costs significantly.
The new Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion is the German company’s most economical car.
BlueMotion sounds like one of those super-duper extra strong washing powders but refers to cars where fuel consumption has been minimised by using a variety of techniques.
These include lowering wind resistance with spoilers, lightweight wheels, low rolling resistance tyres, ‘taller’ ratios in the gearbox, an automatic stop-start system to reduce fuel consumption in traffic and battery regeneration or recuperation to recover energy during braking.
The original Polo BlueMotion of 2007 was capable of 74mpg on the official combined cycle and this has now been improved to 80mpg.
Such figures are only useful as a comparison between different makes and models and impossible to achieve in day-to-day motoring.
Trying to plan ahead and minimise braking and unnecessary halts I got 68.2mpg according to the car’s computer read-out, which I could improve on with gentler acceleration and changing sooner up the five-speed manual gearbox.
An indicator arrow tips you off when an upward change would save you on the black gold if you aren’t instinctively an economical driver.
More time spent in town driving and ‘not hanging about’ on a cross country trip saw my overall fuel consumption drop to 57mpg.
Such frugality, and a CO2 emission figure of only 91g/km, means that you don’t pay any road tax, further reducing your bills.
The three-cylinder diesel engine isn’t the quietest in the world and can feel rough at times, but once warm at higher revs it is quite characterful and its 133 lbs ft of torque punts the Polo along well enough to keep up with our slow UK traffic.
At about 2,000rpm in third gear the engine of the test car made a rather irritating sound similar to that made by a petrol engine when it is ‘pinking.’
Motorways aren’t a problem either and general noise levels on good surfaces are acceptable, but on a long journey the general road noise, mainly from the harder tyres I think, could be tiring.
At one point, following a mobile chicane, aka a Toyota Prius, I was forced down to fourth gear worsening the Polo’s fuel economy.
Those ridiculous speed bumps, which are proven to strain the joints on car suspension as you straddle them, also increase fuel consumption, and pollution, as drivers re-accelerate.
The gear indicator prompts you to change into fifth gear about 42mph.
Thankfully the Polo isn’t poverty spec and comes as standard with comfort and safety features like remote central locking, front electric windows, air conditioning, cruise control, front fog lights, alloy wheels, six-speaker radio and CD player, anti-lock brakes and front airbags.
That’s all fair enough but I was surprised to find tyre pressure indicators to save you grovelling in the dirt every week and on the safety side driver and front passenger ‘active’ head restraints to reduce whiplash if hit from behind.
To the right of the clock there’s a gear change indicator which reminds you what gear you are in and when changing up would save fuel.
Naturally, being a Volkswagen, the Polo feels built to last with a 12 year body protection guarantee, three year paint warranty and three years or 60,000 miles general warranty.
