UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

hi folks! i’m very excited to be (hopefully) joining the club of Polo owners this weekend! it’ll be my first car ever, and so, i feel a bit clueless on how to go about the test drive and buying process. sob story aside, i unfortunately have no family other than a younger sibling who doesn’t drive and none of my pals are car folk either, so i hope it’s okay to ask my potentially noobish questions on here!

the car: it’s a 16 plate 6C, first registered 22 March 2016, just shy of 45k miles, with the 1.2 TSI petrol engine and the five speed manual gearbox. it’s the 5 door version, and as far as i can tell, it doesn’t have any optional extras, but does come with front and rear parking sensors as part of it’s Match spec, and with all the BlueMotion Tech bits. it’s that lovely blue silk metallic colour, not that that matters from the performance perspective. i haven’t yet seen it in person as i’ll have to travel a fair bit to see it, but the head unit has mute as the bottom left button and setup in the top right, which older threads on here suggest mean it’s got that weird in between version of the infotainment system that’s “between” MIB1 and MIB2 and so it can’t be software updated to support carplay.

MOT history: generally clean other than tyres, but it did have “exhaust hydrocarbon content after 2nd fast idle exceeds default limits”, and the same for “exhaust carbon monoxide content” and “exhaust lambda reading”. That was a one off in 2020, and fixed the same day, so i’m assuming that’s not anything that should still impact the car?

the things i already know to check based on threads and buyers guide: AC works, driver side electronic windows open and close, side mirror adjustment buttons work, wipers turn on (and off!), no strange noises from engine when started from cold.

my questions:

anything else that often goes wrong on the 6c that i should be on the lookout for?

anything in particular i should check on the test drive?

does anyone have experience with using those aliexpress / dropshipped MMI carplay interface units in a manual 6c that go above the glovebox plug in between the head unit and the screen? i’m not worried about the fitting part, but i’m curious how well they work and in particular, if the parking sensors still come on automatically when the car is put in reverse? some folks say that it’s fine in autos but that in manuals it might not register the car going into reverse which sounds like a real pain as someone who’ll have to parallel park on a busy street every time i get home.

am i right in thinking that the stop start only triggers in the manual 6cs if i come off the clutch? i live in roundabout hell, so an overzealous stop start system can make a car non viable for me.

thanks for any and all insights in advance!!

Hello and welcome to the 6C Polo 1.2TSI!

First auto Stop/Start - there is a dedicated button that you can press every time you restart the engine, doing that might seem like being a pain in the bottom, but it will help you avoid getting unease until you are happy to do this itself - also it will save you keeping your foot on the clutch pedal which is not a good thing to do.

My wife has a 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 5 Door SEL 110PS 6MT - and I find that car very easy to live with.

Rusting will eventually strike, so maybe get the front wheels off, wheel arch liners off - and clean out the piles of road dirt that have found their home at the lower rear of the front wheel arches.

High exhaust emissions, funnily enough, I always (when I remember) ask for a print out of the exhaust gas levels - and this year they were up to 0.15% - limits being 0.20%. Then and not connected in any way to that, yesterday the MIL light came on and after scanning the car I've found that there is an issue with the post cat Lambda sensor, so I've ordered up a replacement!

The car should not have any knocking creaking etc from the mainly front suspension - the lower arms rear mounting bushes do end up tearing and causing lots of funny noises - and probably another noise source that "is a feature" is rubbery noises from the tops of the front suspension units, might only become an annoyance when the weather gets colder.

Enjoy your new car, treat it to a full tank of E5 expensive fuel once every few months.

Edit:- one thing that surprised me with my wife's Polo is, that after 60,000miles and 11 years, you can look up into the exhaust pipe and it is still shining clean, if I stick a finger up it, all I get is a slight darkish mark on my finger - that car does not have a GPF. Also cheap road tax!

Another Edit:- we have owned this car from new.