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Originally Posted by AS_Telstar_Man
I was talking about Fords marketing and Fords compared to a Toyota - at no point did I mention the Polo. You paid 26k in 2001 money to put a Volkswagen Polo on the road, no doubt with the bigger engine and all the fruit - if I paid 26k for a car that size it better be bloody well built as well! There were no Jap cars that size more expensive than the Polo at the time.
Can't compare a 26k 2001 polo with an 16990 2006 polo either. Your one was built in Germany, the new South African sourced Polos/Golfs...they might use nice materials but believe me they don't make 'em like they used to anymore. I had one mate who had an A3 and moved to the latest diesel 110kW Golf - not impressed with the interior/general quality. Another mate who doesn't wanna upgrade from the previous Golf to the latest one cos the previous German made Golfs had better interiors. But the South African argument is for another time - u better hope they don't start sourcing their Polo hatches from China soon.
As for resale values - here's some real facts:
2001 5 door 5 sp manual cars with the smallest donk you can get.
Polo: http://www.redbookasiapacific.com/au...p?key=VOLK01AV
Echo: http://www.redbookasiapacific.com/au...p?key=TOYO01CS
Echo wins on a percentage basis. Fiesta has only been out since 04 so I'll have to wait until 09 to do the 5 year thing with a Fiesta.
If you drive a Prius and any other Fiesta/Polo/Yaris/Jazz/Swift on the highway, the non-hybrids will beat the Prius in fuel economy - this is a known fact. Prius weighs 300kg more and the petrol 1.5litre has to remain running on the highway. Actually, I never saw the point of buying a 30k+ hybrid in the first place as the hybrid uses the same amount of petrol as a 17k econobox. If you need to drive, the kindest thing you can do for the environment and your wallet is to buy a 17k econobox cos it takes less resources to build than a hybrid and will have a longer operating life than a hybrid. Hybrids are useful only if they're big like the GS450H or whatever it is - giving you heaps of big luxury car performance at 11l/100km.
My previous post got me thinking though - Holden has buggered up as well - they were onto a good thing when they were doing the whole segregated 'Local importer of Opel || Commodore Factory' image before they flushed it all down the toilet in favour of badge engineering daewoos. Ford should be pushing harder with that - trying to split its Ford of Europe products from everything else. They weren't helped when ACA did a 'lemon car' article and one of the cars was a Focus LX :( |
The current 16,990 Polo is basically the 26k on-road 01 Polo. Same engine (at that time there was only one engine - 55kW 1.4 16V, which is 59kW in the 06 model), same gearboxes etc etc. The Polo we had was not built in Germany, it was built in Spain. So is the current model. The Golf is made in South Africa, the Polo Sedan in China, the TDI and GTI in Germany. The rest of them are made in Spain. The Fiesta actually does rival the Polo we had for interior feel & quality, and outright quality, which is the impressive thing about it.
As for the Golfs made in South Africa, no problems with our Golf 2.0 FSI, or my best mate's parents 2.0 FSI (both 2006), or the 2.0 FSI Sportline another friend of ours had last year. Our FSI and my mate's parents one are averaging 7.5L/100km. That's what my lighter, smaller, manual Fiesta does (the Golfs are both 6spd automatics).
As for the Redbook prices, don't trust that too much. Like I said, our Polo traded for 12k. According to Redbook that's higher then the highest average private sale price... but if you pay attention to some used car prices, that's not exactly the case. Ours was automatic, that was the only major difference you could get in 2001, there was really only one Polo at the time.
I agree that Holden's stuffed up big time. The Barina name has been completley destroyed. The flop that was the Adventra was more likely then not a better car then this new Daewoo 4WD they're getting. They're having trouble moving the new TK Barina stock. Look at some dealerships and how cheap you can get a new one, its scary. I've seen them advertised for as low as $9000. Brand new, 0km. That must be painful.