Rush Hour: Cruising in comfort in the Polo Vivo
The trendy vehicle is available at South Coast Volkswagen on the coast.
It’s hard not to like Volkswagen… or people’s car, and driving the new 1.4 Polo Vivo Comfortline last week brought back fond memories.
As a boy in the ’80s my folks had a gold-coloured VW Golf Jumbo. I remember because there was an elephant sticker on the back window or somewhere there.
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We loved that car. My two sisters and I all learned to drive in it. Ground the gearbox to a pulp but that’s besides the point.
My first car was also a VW Citi Golf, an 1.8 rocket that was a fourth- or fifth-hand purchase for R16 000 in 1996 from my brother-in-law. “Goes like a bat out of hell,” he grinned.
It did, but only once you got it into gear. Again, grinding and gnashing. Starter motor was also an issue.
The latest VW Polo Vivo Comfortline 1.4, which I had the pleasure of driving for a week, gave me none of these troubles.
It’s a beautiful car, drives like a dream and is wonderfully comfortable inside, hence the name Comfortline. You can rest assured it lives up to that name.
It’s a bit on the small side if you’re a family man, and power up the hills is not quite the same as that in the Audi RS3 which I had driven the week before.
Power in the five-speed manual is 63kW at 5000rpm, with peak torque of 132Nm at 3750rpm.
Zero to 100km is 12.2 seconds, which should come as a relief for a parent buying it for a university-bound son.
But I can’t laugh too much at its pace … it took me longer to finish the 100m dash in school days when I was what my mates described as ‘sneaky slow’ – ie: I looked fast but wasn’t.
The Vivo’s top speed is 177kmh. Fuel consumption is your wallet’s friend at 5.9l/100km. Fuel tank capacity is 45 litres.
It would make a superb car for a first-time car owner – like a university-bound student – or for someone looking for comfort over speed.
Having said that, it drives smoothly on the highway, is more than comfortable at between 120km and 130km, and handles with aplomb.
While the Jumbo needed a few kickstarts to get going in its old age, this Vivo has reliability written all over it.
There’s a certain solidity about it, too. There’s no flimsy, tinny sound when you ‘gently slam’ the doors shut.
Boot space is not super huge if you want to pack golf clubs and bikes, but for normal luggage like nine bags for your wife and kids and one for you, you should be able to squash it all in.
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