Potential Purchase - Reliability?

[MJ67]

Hi all, first post. Wife and I have just retired and looking to purchase probably our final car - certainly ICE anyway. We hope this will last us 8'ish years and 100k miles.

We're leaning towards just a brand new Polo TSI Life (not bothered about trim or bells and whistles) in 95PS manual.

At our age we're very concerned about reliability - we know how expensive VWs can be to put right, so we'd likely purchase the 5 year warranty option anyway, and just hope it's worth it and that VW would honour anything under it.

My question is..... just HOW reliable really are these Polos nowadays? I'm reading lots of worrying stuff online and they don't appear to score well in car surveys. Quite concerning for us as we don't have a bottomless pit of money.

Also ..... what might a realistic MPG be for mostly long runs and a reasonably light foot?

Thanks all.

[lancslad1985]

I’ve had a lot of VWs and my wife still has her two year old r line polo. I traded in my year old gti in December to move brands so I will give you an honest assessment as I do like VW cars.

The pros - the current polo is spacious for a city car, comfortable unless you get the gti and comes with a decent kit list. My wife and daughter regularly go out with a huge Labrador on the back seats and all are very happy. Mpg is usually around 40-50 and she has the 95ps. My gti used to hover around low 40s. The engines all respond well and are nippy.

The cons - we’ve had numerous polos between us and all of them have had some sort of issue or other. Most were minor, such as the infotainment occasionally crashing but that was resolved with just resetting it. The cold weather bong is also the same as “the car is broken” bong which can be off putting in winter. However I’ve had four polos and two had serious issues - one had a completely broken infotainment and the other had two cracked windscreens right in the same corner (bad batch of windscreens) and then the cruise control ecu broke meaning no cruise control or anti crash system. My wife also had a polo where they’d not bothered putting the lining inside the wheel arch so it soaked her interior until it was fixed.

My bigger concern is the fact that most VWs have a little silicate bag in the coolant which can burst and block your cooling system. I know a few people this happened to.

That said, I never had an issue with both of my golfs, my troc or my Tiguan. So it isn’t just VW as a whole, I just found every polo we’ve had has had some sort of niggle at best. Ultimately if you want reliability for a long time I’d look elsewhere - VW never rank well for reliability for a reason. That said, the polo itself is a good car and I loved my gti and my wife loves her r-line. I wouldn’t want to take them out of their warranty period though.

[SRGTD]

I have a 2020 Polo - the current shape but the pre-facelift car. My car’s a GTI, but I’ve owned VW’s now for nearly 22 years (my current car is my fifth VW - all five owned from new), so although I can’t comment specifically on the Polo Life model, I can comment on my experience of Polo ownership and VW in general.

The positives;

• Mechanically, my current car has been faultless (current mileage is around 16,300); nothing’s gone wrong, it’s never let me down and it’s only needed to go back to the dealers for routine servicing and it’s first MOT last year (no warranty work’s been needed).

• As @lancslad1985 has said, for a segment B car, it has a roomy interior - and decent luggage space - and I find the layout of the controls intuitive and easy to use.

• Fuel economy is good - my car has a 2.0 litre 197bhp engine and my long term average fuel consumption is around 44 mpg, so I’d expect a 1.0 litre 95ps Life model to better this by a sizeable margin.

The negatives;

• Based on my 22 years of VW ownership, I’ve found the build quality to be ‘so-so’ - all five VW’s I’ve owned have had a build quality issue or issues of some sort, including uneven panel gaps / shut lines, a paintwork imperfection, incorrect bumper inserts fitted on a mk4 Golf (the inserts were the wrong colour!), a small dent and scratches. I hasten to add that no one car has had all of these issues but each car has had at least one. My current car had some uneven panel gaps and a damaged driver’s side sill scuff plate on collection day. In my humble opinion, issues such as this should have been picked up during the QC process at the factory or during the PDI carried out by the dealer prior to me taking delivery. So always take time to inspect a new car very carefully on collection day, and take someone with you who can also inspect the car and be a second pair of eyes.

• I found it quite difficult to find a comfortable seating position in my current car and I’ve never had this problem in any of my previous 4 VW’s (3 Golfs and a Polo). I have a long standing back problem so seat comfort is important to me and I eventually found a seating position that I’d describe as ‘acceptable’, although not perfect. So take a long test drive to ensure you can find a comfortable seating position.

• From what I’ve read on various forums, VW dealerships can be a bit hit and miss. The dealership I use used to be very good but they’re now part of a larger group and following my car’s last service, the quality of workmanship was below what I expect - the level of the fresh engine oil was barely on the minimum mark on the dipstick and the tyre pressures hadn’t been checked / corrected (I’d checked them during the week before the service - didn’t bother topping them up because of the imminent service). It may be time for me to find a different dealership.

I have an extended warranty on my car. With modern cars being so full of tech, I don’t think I’d want to risk owning a car outside of the warranty period. You’ve mentioned a five year warranty option - as far as I’m aware, VW don’t offer a five year warranty, although there is the option to purchase either VW’s ‘All-In’ product or a VW stand alone extended warranty when the car reaches three years old.

@lancslad1985 mentioned the silicate bag in the cooling system and instances of this splitting. I thought VW have stopped using these now as they’ve changed the formation of their coolant which I think rendered the use of the silicate bag unnecessary.

So, I’d say my current Polo has been OK, but not as good as the Polo it replaced (a 2016 Polo GTI) or the 2011 mk6 Golf GTD prior to that. Would I buy another? I’m not sure.

[MJ67]

Great detailed replies from both of you - many thanks for your time. I think you've both answered my question. We've now completely decided against a VW Polo...which is a shame as it's probably the nicest styled car in this size category IMO.

Couple of points....yes, I was aware of the silica bag in the coolant header tank....my Daughter's Up!! had one and I removed it. A potential catastrophe in the making for folks unaware of this. Naughty VW!!

VW do indeed do an extended warranty - i had a price off the dealership for this.... £330 for 1 year extension (to 4 years) and £520 for 2 years (to 5 years old)...although as you mentioned the 'all in' monthly option of many things was definitely the better option I felt.

Anyway..... again thanks for this, and we threw caution to the wind today and ordered a Skoda Kamiq 150PS DSG MonteCarlo. f**k it...you only die once