No Polo R to protect Audi S1 sales

Picture courtesy of Ausmotive and Motor Authority

This is old news but I thought I should put it up in light of my coverage of the Polo GTI and other Volkswagen vehicles.

There was a rumour that Volkswagen’s new R GmbH department was working on an R version of the new Polo but while speaking at the launch of the new Polo GTI (19 May 2010), Volkswagen’s technical chief, Dr. Ernst Linder, said that the company has ruled out doing a hyper-performance version of the super-mini.

“I would say there have been some ideas about [Polo R], but more in the press than the company itself because we have our GTI and within our company Audi has an S1,” Linder said. “The S1 topped our GTI and to put a car above both, we think we’ll not have the volume to make it interesting. It would be too small amount of cars we can sell like this.

The new Audi S1 will be powered by the same 1.4L turbocharged and supercharged engine used in the Polo GTI.

Thats the bad news. Now the good news is that Linder confirmed a Jetta R was in the works . So if you are in the market for a sports sedan, well this might be it. The Volkswagen Jetta R is rumored to use the same 2.0litre turbo and all-wheel-drive system from the Golf R.