2002 Volkswagen Polo 9N review from Australia and New Zealand

I bought my 2002 VW Polo privately and sold it not even 12 months after I bought it. It was incredibly unreliable and was going to send me broke (or insane) having to repair it so often! I’d also like to note that I had a full RAA inspection done on it before I bought it and did my research on the internet (on this website in fact, however no bad Australian reviews were listed back then).

I hardly drove it the first 6 months I owned it because I was able to walk to work. When I moved house I was driving it regularly and straight away I had problems. The car ran rough with complete lack of power. I took it to my mechanic who replaced a fuel injector coil (at a cost of $350 due to the time spent to diagnose the problem). The car drove fine for about a week before having the same symptoms again. I took it back to my mechanic who replaced another fuel injector coil (cost $120 this time as it was easier to diagnose). It drove fine for about a month before having the same symptoms yet again. I booked it into my mechanic the following week. Before I could get it to the mechanic the EPC warning light came on the dash. By this point in time, I had started researching again on the internet to see if Polo’s were prone to these problems when I found the European reviews listed on this website. If you are looking at buying one of these cars, I suggest you read these reviews. In a nutshell, the European reviews talked about loss of power and problems with the EPC light that were hard to diagnose and repair. So you can imagine when the EPC light came on in my car, I was not a happy camper!

I took my car to my mechanic who could not find a problem with any of the fuel injector coils however one of the computers (a Mirelli computer I may add) was showing an error message. The wiring to this computer was replaced, but the computer still showed the error message. I wasn’t charged by my mechanic as he didn’t feel he had fixed the problem and recommended I take it to a VW specialist. I took it to VW who could not find anything wrong with the car, but suggested I spend $200 on replacing more of the wiring to the computer and if it played up again then the computer may need to be replaced. I wasn’t willing to take that chance. The visit to VW ended up costing me $88 for them to clear the error message on the computer and test drive it. While there, I spoke to the VW specialist who openly told me that 2002 VW Polo’s are lemon’s, not just mine, but that model in particular. Apparently the production of them was quite poor and in particular there was “over-crimping” of the wiring and over time the wiring becomes loose, causing all sorts of electrical problems.

Needless to say I sold the car and am much happier for it. One of the posts on the European pages said to “avoid like the plague” and I tend to agree!