With just weeks left to shake down the car, the crew from Oneighturbo caught the 300-plus horsepower Polo working out the kinks at an undisclosed road course. From what we can tell, the car looks plenty fast on pavement, with ample grip in corners thanks in part to its all-wheel drive setup.
It seems to stick the landing after getting airborne, too, and we’ll admit that the Polo R WRC looks like more fun to drive than any Volkswagen we’ve ever wheeled on a racetrack.
We’re sure it’s more fun than the road-going Polo R WRC, too, which gets a bigger (but less powerful) 2.0-liter turbocharged engine sending power to the front wheels only. VW claims the car’s 220 horsepower will take it from 0-60 mph in just 6.4 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 151 mph.
We’ll never know, since the not-for-U.S.-sale Polo R WRC will be limited to just 2,500 copies, all of them destined for Europe. At least we get the Golf R and GTI to play with here, even if we can't fully defeat the cars' stability control systems for track driving.