Faults:

Immobilizer reader coil failed at about 61,000 miles - cost £160 to replace at a Volkswagen dealer.

Front top suspension mounts replaced at 80,000 miles.

Clutch and Flywheel replaced at 90,000 miles. Special "dual-mass flywheel" is supposed to be replaced along with the clutch. Total cost of clutch and flywheel was an insanely expensive £500 + VAT.

Wear on gearbox first motion shaft caused another clutch failure at 110,000 miles.

Rear wheel bearings seem to need replacing at every MOT test! Front wheel bearings not fairing much better.

General Comments:

This car is dog slow in anything above 2nd gear.

Eats front brake disks and pads for breakfast.

Excellent, reliable engine - 122,000 miles and still going strong without smoking at all. This is only let down by suspect build quality of the rest of the car.

Stupid insurance costs (group 6) for a car that does 0-60 in however long it takes you to find a steep hill to go down... with the wind behind you... (just kidding, it's probably something like 16 seconds).

They still look fairly cool even after 7 years and 2 newer shapes.

High residual values. Make no mistake about it, these cars are overvalued.

Faults:

Interior light has never worked, and dealer unwilling to repair.

Drivers door hinge fell off after 2 months.

Electric Mirror failed and was replaced under warranty.

Gearbox failed 1 month after warranty expired! Had to replace with original VW part at V.W. dealer who were not able to do repair for 3 weeks and no courtesy car available. After several letters to V.W. they agreed to pay half of the bill. (The car had only done 10,000 miles!)

Having spoken to several other Polo owner this is fairly common on 1.4 Polos made in 1995/6.

Water gets in from both passenger and driver doors and despite the car being taken to dealer to have new door rubbers etc, every time it rains there are puddles in the foot wells. Again a very common fault and one which the dealer has apparently 'never come across'.

General Comments:

Good reliability. Always starts first time.

Car is now 7 years old and still looks good.

Standard alloy wheels are too small and high profile tires look a bit silly.

These Polo's are rated as the top Super-mini. In my opinion they are vastly overrated. The car is slow, expensive to buy and run and has very average build quality.

The gearbox is very poor and difficult to put into reverse.

The standard stereo and speakers are terrible.

No electric windows, central locking or sunroof. (Poor spec.)

Rear visibility is a joke. Move if you see one reversing toward you!!

Boot is far too small. Smaller than a Metro! It is quite deep though.

60bhp from a 1.4 engine is not very good and as the car is fairly heavy this makes progress very slow.