Built to a price

With my Passat off the road due to Spanish Flew, I've been given a little Polo to drive until mine is repaired.

I was quite looking forward to it, because I've been hankering for my wife to replace her Lupo with something slightly more practical (the Lupo has no boot to speak of, so we end up using my car for everything), and I have good memories of the Polos I have driven in the past.

In fact, my first experience of your modern Volkswagen with a water-cooled engine was when I hired a Polo to keep me on the road when one of my Beetles was crushed... by a lorry. Don't know if the driver in that case was Spanish.

My favourite Polo is always the saloon version, which is rare. I like them because I think the overhanging boot bit gives a better balance, and the boot was always HUGE - Mondeo-sized, which is impressive for such a small car. Why am I obsessed with boot size? Ask your dad. With my ex-girlfriend, I bought a Saloon 1.3 in the late 80s. It was black, with front driving lights, and was once mistaken (by someone very stupid looking at it from across a cricket field) for a BMW.

Driving lights are good. Like front fog lights, except they only come on when you go onto your full beams, i.e., when it's appropriate, and not all the time as some tossers seem to insist with the fogs.

Later, I had a more recent (P reg) Saloon with a 1.6 petrol engine, and I loved that car. It was more fun to drive than the Bora I had after, or the current Passat.

It comes around and goes around, and I'm in another lorry-induced Polo holiday, except this one's disappointing. It's the base model, of course, and it looks OK from the outside (and the headlights are very bright, as is the modern way), but it feels so flimsy and plasticky, and so light and skittery on the road, that it in no way resembles a Volkswagen as I have known them for 21 years. It feels as bad as the Peugeot 307 I drove in the summer, and I do wonder how well it will survive the harsh mileage it is about to do in my hands.