Volkswagen Polo GTi - no Extra Costs, Even For DIY Enthusiasts

It's amazing what people will do if they feel it is socially acceptable. For example auditioning to be locked in a house for three months surrounded by cameras is the gateway to 'stardom', jumping off a tall building to your imminent death before a piece of cloth catches the air is seen as 'fun' and jumping into a freezing cold Scottish lake on New Year's Day is 'tradition'. People also think nothing of taking a screwdriver to the family Volkswagen Polo and having a bash at 'improving' it themselves.

I must admit that I'm guilty of having a go at modifying my current and previous wheels with mixed success. It's funny to think that despite the millions of pounds spent designing the car you own; people automatically assume a few hundred quid here and there will improve it. Imagine if you applied this to your household items. Your washing machine for example spins at 1,000 a minute. Have you ever thought of turbo-charging it to boost spin power by 50%? Of course you haven't as the professionals who built it would've done that already if it improved the cleanliness of your clothing.

I've got a toasted sandwich maker loving stored at the back of one of my cupboards that's never seen the light of day. Do I have the urge to mould grooves to make it cook faster on the hot-plate? Clearly not. My PlayStation 3 doesn't come with a spoiler fitted to make it load faster and my bed hasn't been lowered to impress the ladies.

The furthest extreme I've seen car modifying taken was courtesy of my mate who quite frankly I keep as a friend purely for his humorous antics. Not content with buying a Volkswagen Polo from eBay of all places and then travelling 300 miles to collect a car that clearly wasn't as specified in the advert, he's spent a large amount of time flushing his money down the drain modifying the poor car. Let me throw some figures at you. He bought the car for £3000 and has since spent £750 on a exhaust, £100 on silver door pin covers for when the door lock pops up, £150 to have the rear boot handle spray painted, £500 on a sound system that flattens the car battery in five minutes, £150 to have the front grill replaced and the icing on the cake - £200 to have the engine re-mapped.

Now re-mapping isn't changing the location of the engine parts, but having a boffin with a laptop plugging up to the engine and magically generating more power from it. This sounds great and for £200 you can't go wrong you must be thinking. Only problem is that Volkswagen are German and no-one designs machinery better than them, particularly when you consider the people employed to do the tricky calculations under the bonnet barely see daylight and instead see numbers flashing before their eyes. As a result, £200 laptop man has managed to confuse the sophisticated computer that controls all facets of the engine working correctly and my mate now drives around with so many warning lights on his dashboard it's permanently Christmas for him.

What he should've done if he wanted a Volkswagen Polo with more oomph is to have purchased the GTi version. The Polo comes with the same turbocharged 1.8 litre engine found in the Audi TT; albeit one that produces 148bhp rather than 237bhp. Clearly Volkswagen have put their sensible hats on as anymore power than the 148 would quite frankly be scary, so no need to get the laptop out then.

Thanks to this relative restraint under the bonnet the chassis can cope with the power, giving you the confidence to throw the car into any corner and feel confident you won't end up in a hedge. It'll still race to 60mph in just 8.2 seconds mind. The Polo GTi is what made the original Golf GTi so exciting before it got bloated with age - it looks like the standard hatchback save for a few subtle tweaks to the front grill and ride height, but it has real spirit and the feeling that there is nothing superfluous to distract from the joy of driving it.

It's far closer to the cost of the original Golf GTi too with a new Polo GTi costing under £15,000 which taking into account inflation is marginally more than the original GTi's £5,700 price tag in 1981. Compared to the massive £22,000 the Golf GTi now commands new this really is a no brainer. It would save my friend a fortune in time and money - especially a second hand version.

The Volkswagen Polo GTi is perfection - so keep your hands off.