Driving cool cars not imported stateside always offer a recipe for mixed emotions. On one hand, you get a cool experience that you wouldn’t otherwise get to have, but on the other hand it’s a slap in the face knowing that you can’t ever have the cool thing unless you get a gig wit…
You guys (VoA) are killing me by not having this available in the USA. But then I would not buy it new anyway and would have to wait for a cream puff low mileage used car to show up. But I digress.
Noddaz said:You guys (VoA) are killing me by not having this available in the USA. But then I would not buy it new anyway and would have to wait for a cream puff low mileage used car to show up. But I digress.
why doesn't my car run like that?
Yeah I totally get the realities of international business and federalization and importation and whatnot, but this one not coming stateside stings. It's very much the spiritual successor to the GTI we all grew up with, and one of the most direct links to the golden age of hot hatches I've driven in the last decade.
With as much speed as we got out of our Mk7 GTI by plugging in a fancy dongle, I'm confident you could get GTI (or maybe even R) levels of speed out of the Polo.
I saw 3000 lbs and thought what? How heavy were the earlier versions and a series 2 (1981 - 1994) was 1625 to 1750 lbs. Cars have put on a lot of weight.
Rons said:I saw 3000 lbs and thought what? How heavy were the earlier versions and a series 2 (1981 - 1994) was 1625 to 1750 lbs. Cars have put on a lot of weight.
Yes they have. But then cars have come quite a long way since then also. Sunroof? Yep, but it had a hand crank. Stereo? Yep, two speakers and maybe 20 watts of power. A/C? Maybe, if you think you couldn't live without it. And you worried about the weight penalty.
Very cool. Small cars like this and Toyota's European GR Yaris and Ford's Fiesta ST would make fun autocrossers on technical courses. With 200 TW tires my wife gets better times with her Fiat 500 Abarth than faster heavier cars and parking in town is a breeze!
In reply to Colin Wood :
Do you have an article on that? What did you guys use?
My late-nineties-something trip to Germany had me dumbfounded when I saw that the Golf had younger, smaller siblings in the Polo and the diminutive Lupo. Two cars which I thought were pretty cool and smaller than the Golf; was wishing we had them here too.
In reply to chp5 :
Yes. Here are the two specific updates I was thinking of:
I'd also recommend checking out the rest of the updates since there's a lot of great info in there as well:
In reply to Rons :
Funny thing is my 2016 GTI S PP 6spd manual w/cloth and no sunroof comes in right at 3000lbs as well. My 1984 Jetta GLI is 1980lbs but feels like it's made of balsa wood in comparison to the Mk7
The Original GT1 was +/- 1,800#s, if memory serves
I bought a MK 7.5 Golf GTi in 2019 ... and I would LOVE an even smaller car like the Polo GTi. If the car had been offered stateside at the time, I'm 99% certain I would chosen the smaller car...and joined the other six Americans that would have chosen similarly. 
Noddaz said:Rons said:I saw 3000 lbs and thought what? How heavy were the earlier versions and a series 2 (1981 - 1994) was 1625 to 1750 lbs. Cars have put on a lot of weight.
Yes they have. But then cars have come quite a long way since then also. Sunroof? Yep, but it had a hand crank. Stereo? Yep, two speakers and maybe 20 watts of power. A/C? Maybe, if you think you couldn't live without it. And you worried about the weight penalty.
Hand CRANK? Maybe for a luxury car. Gotta have a flip lever 
Coniglio Rampante said:...and joined the other six Americans that would have chosen similarly.
Yeah this is it right here, isn't it?
I think a huge thing that Americans without any passport stamps they didn't get from a cruise to Mexico don't understand is just how cheap our gas is and how huge our streets are when compared to Europe. And that absolutely affects our vehicle choices.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
You're spot on. I spent two weeks driving around Europe last year with a rental Mk. 8 Golf as my weapon of choice and there were quite a few streets in Italy that made me feel like I was driving an F-150. I can drive in Chicago without breaking a sweat, but taking that car up the Stelvio Pass or through the towns surrounding Lake Garda had more than a few pucker moments; of course, the Italians were driving/biking around with effortless speed and efficiency.
On a side note, I thought I would hate the touch controls in the Mk. 8, but I actually had no issues with it. That could be because I used Carplay the entire time and only touched the climate control once to set my preferred temp, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be (caveat: the steering wheel had hard buttons instead of the capacitative ones)
In reply to Noddaz :
Completely agree!!!
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