Volkswagen Polo Saloon (1985 - 1992) CFE 2d Owner Review

How reliable do you find the car?

I bought the car as a retro daily driver after it had spent 10 years being garage kept and only covering 1500 miles. I added 10,000 miles in the first year, which meant a lot of the original 30+ yr old parts wore out. In the first 18 months it had all round new brakes and master cylinder, fuel pump, starter motor, alternator and carburettor. This meant the car was in and out of the garage quite a few times and racked up a decent bill. Nothing was overly hard to fix but having breakdown cover was a necessity! Now the car is used to its increased usage it runs great and is a reliable ride.

Does the car do everything you expected it to do?

The Polo Classic or 'Derby' has been a lot of fun to own. The original 1.1 litre engine is nippy and responsive and frequently returns 50mpg on a long run, keeping up well with the pace of modern traffic and motorway driving. Lack of servo on the brakes and sometimes hair raising under-steer definitely makes it an energetic drive, particularly on country roads although sticking to a sensible speed it handles just fine... The cabin, although small, is spacious enough to seat four adults comfortably but it does struggle with hills under load. Stick a fifth person in there and you're not going anywhere fast... However, having owned a MK2 breadvan many years ago, the increased boot space on this car gives it a real boost in practicality. The car attracts a lot of attention and stands out next to other MK2 VWs as being unusual. I've never seen another saloon on the road since owning this one and as a practical daily classic it's certainly ticked all the boxes for me.