2014 VW Polo limbos to $15,990 drive-away

Volkswagen announces discount drive-away pricing on new Polo before it’s even arrived in showrooms.

Stand-by for more super-sharp deals in the city-car class. German car maker Volkswagen has limboed to a $15,990 drive-away price for the updated Polo due in showrooms later this month.

The run-out pricing for the brand-new model is unprecedented for Volkswagen’s city car and meets its Japanese and Korean rivals head-on.

The $15,990 drive-away price for the new generation VW Polo hatch is the same cost to the dollar as the special deals on the top-selling Mazda2 and Toyota Yaris, only $500 more than a Holden Barina and $1000 more than a Hyundai i20 three-door.

The only catch: the $15,990 price is for the manual model, automatic transmission adds an unusually high $2500, to $18,490 drive-away.

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Volkswagen Australia has not yet announced the price to the public but it has distributed pricing to dealers ahead of the new model’s arrival later this month.

The current model VW Polo is in run-out for $15,490 drive-away.

The new model comes with two new engine choices: a 1.2-litre turbo four-cylinder petrol engine available in two power grades, 66kW or a slightly perkier 81kW.

They are both so fuel efficient that Volkswagen has dropped the diesel engine from the updated Polo line-up.

Both models sip a combined average of 4.7L/100km, which is 23 per cent more fuel-efficient than the current petrol-powered Polo (6.1L/100km) and almost as the same as the discontinued diesel (4.6L/100km).

The only downside to the new Polo’s frugality is that both variants insist on 95 octane premium unleaded petrol, which is 10 to 20 cents per litre dearer than regular unleaded. At least you’ll be using less of it.

Other changes to the updated Polo are largely cosmetic, with subtle changes to the headlights, grille and front bumper.

Meanwhile there is still no news regarding the changes to the popular VW Polo GTI.

Volkswagen is expected to unveil the updated model at the Paris motor show in October before it goes on sale in Australian showrooms early next year.

It is still unclear if the updated VW Polo GTI will get a mildly revised version of the twin-charge (turbo- and super-charged) 1.4-litre engine, or an all-new motor.

There will, however, likely be blackout on the VW Polo GTI while the new model ramps up.

When stocks of the current Polo GTI are sold out, they won’t be replaced until the new model arrives early next year, even though it comes from a different factory to the regular model.

The standard Polo comes to Australia from South Africa whereas the Polo GTI is made in Spain.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s aggressive pricing on the new Polo range is being viewed as part of its concerted effort to overtake Toyota by 2018.

Official figures show that Volkswagen has closed to the gap to global sales leader Toyota in the first half of this year, and may overtake the Japanese company by the end of 2014 -- four years ahead of schedule.

Toyota has reportedly sold 5.097 million vehicles in the first six months of the year, compared with VW’s reported tally of 4.97 million.

Last year Toyota sold 9.98 million vehicles globally across all its brands, compared with the 9.71 million vehicles sold by General Motors and 9.7 million cars, vans and trucks across Volkswagen’s multiple brands.