A fresh report out of the United Kingdom suggests that Volkswagen is hard at work developing a flagship Polo R, but has yet to decide whether to put what would essentially be a mini-hyper-hatch into production.
According to Autocar, VW insiders have confirmed the existence of a handful of Polo R prototypes built for “evaluation purposes”.
The British publication reports that dropping the Golf R’s 228 kW turbocharged four-cylinder engine into the sixth-generation Polo would be relatively simple, considering that the new Polo GTI uses a closely related 2,0-litre unit.
“There is enough room for all the extra cooling in the Polo, for sure,” Ralf Kölling, Volkswagen’s director of small car lines, told Autocar.
Interestingly, the publication added that even the Golf R’s all-wheel-drive system could be employed in the proposed Polo R since the latest Polo shares its MQB platform with the C-segment hatchback. But the chances of that seem slim considering that the resulting (lighter) Polo R would likely easily outperform its larger Golf R sibling.
Of course, a prototype Polo R has been built before (back in 2014), but it didn’t ever make it to production…
