1990 Volkswagen Polo Fox Coupe review from UK and Ireland

The exhaust kept falling off as the bracket it was hung from had rusted away.

Hand brake cable was on its last legs.

This was my girlfriends car, not mine.

I was away in Bristol when I got the call:

Me: 'Hello'

GF: 'Hi, I've seen a car I might buy'

Me: 'Oh right, what is it?'

GF: 'An H-reg Polo 1.0'

Me: 'Hmmmm, how many miles? Does it have an MOT?'

GF: '120k, 1 month MOT'

Me: 'No, leave it'

GF: 'Errr, I've actually paid for it...'

Me:' Oh...'

So the next day we went to collect the little beast. And what a beast it was:

VW Polo, FOX (in big red letters on the back)

Coupe (I use the term 'Coupe' loosely)

Faded blue paint work, big dent in the passenger door and rust.

So I took it out for a drive and everything seemed to work OK and £225 was handed over.

Now be under no illusion, this is no sports coupe (despite the coupe tag), the 1.0 engine is pitiful, joining the motorway took careful planning, thrashing the guts out of it and working the 4 speed box.

As for the handling, actually pretty good, horrific amounts of body roll but its skinny little tyres just seemed to grip and grip, in fact I think I went round some corners faster in this than I did in my car.

Brakes in one word, s**t!

Economy was rubbish too, not sure why seeing as it was a 1.0, maybe something wrong with the car, maybe is was the fact it had not been serviced in 5 years according to the service book!

Image, fine if you're a girl, but as a bloke you look silly driving this car. One day I'd stopped at some traffic lights and a girl of about 9 or 10 looked at me in the Polo beast, turned to her mother and said: 'Mum, look at that man in that rubbish car'! This wasn't helped but the big rust patch that had appeared on the bonnet from where I'd stripped off the paint with a pressure washer one day. The car also stunk, we couldn’t work out why for weeks and then I found a discarded milk shake cup under the seat, nice gone off milk smell wafting around the car in the height of summer!

Reliability was OK apart from the exhaust kept falling off and scrapping along the ground, not good on a dual carriageway. I finally fixed this problem with a wire coat hanger.

We finally scrapped the car once its MOT had run out.

Would I get another? YES, any car no matter what it is, is great if you’ve paid less than £500 for it, you simply don’t care about what happens to it.