After the 2014 Polo facelift was revealed a few days ago and now news about the little VW's future comes storming in. We've head about a plug-in hybrid and a natural gas version for the first time yesterday, but changes to the GTI have been rumored for a lot longer.
These seem to be trickling down through the dealer network in Asia, the latest coming from Malaysia's paultang.org. They say the 2015 Polo GTI will have more power, which we already knew, but go into specifics. Apparently the hot hatch will go from the current 180 PS to 192 PS, bridging the gap between the 192 PS Fieta ST and the 200 PS Clio RS.
Does this tie in with the Chinese report that the Polo GTI will actually have a 1.8 TSI instead of the current 1.4 TSI? Probably not, since no VW dealer could "forget" to add the fact that the engine is much bigger. Hopefully, over the next few months things will start to sift through.
More interesting is the fact that next year's Polo GTI will have a manual gearbox, not available since the days of the Type 9N.
While this could make the car a bit more involving to drive, an engaging experience is something fans have been demanding for years now. In addition, the dry-clutch DSG7 fitted the GTI has suffered a lot of reliability problems which the cheaper and simpler manual will avoid.
Does this tie in with the Chinese report that the Polo GTI will actually have a 1.8 TSI instead of the current 1.4 TSI? Probably not, since no VW dealer could "forget" to add the fact that the engine is much bigger. Hopefully, over the next few months things will start to sift through.
More interesting is the fact that next year's Polo GTI will have a manual gearbox, not available since the days of the Type 9N.
While this could make the car a bit more involving to drive, an engaging experience is something fans have been demanding for years now. In addition, the dry-clutch DSG7 fitted the GTI has suffered a lot of reliability problems which the cheaper and simpler manual will avoid.