PoloDriver

It’s already been crowned European Car of the Year 2010, but the Polo is now in the running for the World Car of the Year 2010 title. Last month we reported on the model’s success in the preliminary voting by the 59 international motoring journalist jurors where it made it into the initial top ten, but now there’s even better news; the car has now made it to the final list of three. Announced at the Geneva motor show this week, the Polo is doing battle with the Mercedes E-Class and the Toyota Prius. Fingers crossed – the winner will be announced at the New York International Auto Show on 1 April.

With the Mk 6 Golf the overall winner in 2009, can Volkswagen make it two years in a row? Start the discussion by leaving a comment below.

Volkswagen has had a busy Geneva motor show and just as the latest new Polo variants were unveiled, the company’s German website was updated to include the CrossPolo. While there’s no more information on the GTI as of yet, there are new photos of the CrossPolo in the signature colour of Magma Orange, which proves that it is the colour for this ‘lifestyle’ model. There are new wallpapers of both cars, though; click here and choose ‘The new Polo GTI’ or ‘The new CrossPolo’ from the menu and then click on ‘Wallpaper’ to grab yours.

Environmental protection is the top priority for Volkswagen: new campaign for efficient driving and environmental awareness

Volkswagen launched its new ‘Think Blue’ campaign on 27 February, using and building on its BlueMotion tag for its greenest and lowest-polluting models. The company says that ‘protecting the environment is simple and everyone can help in their everyday lives,’ and that along with BlueMotion, it is ‘sending out a new signal for sustainable mobility.’ Marketing puff maybe, but the newest incarnation of the Polo BlueMotion is set to play a major part in the Think Blue marketing campaign.

Fielding press and TV advertisements, brochures, web specials and the Think Blue Challenge game for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, all the marketing strands feature a focus on potential savings, sustainability and environmental awareness. The popular interactive Volkswagen Polo Challenge game for example, seems to have been adapted to become the Think Blue Challenge app, where gamers drive more environmentally to use less fuel. In all materials for the campaign, the predominant colour is – ironically for a green campaign – blue, again underpinning the BlueMotion philosophy. The company’s goal is to establish Think Blue as an expression of its corporate mindset and a firm feature of its ecologically sustainable activities.

Linking its future with its past, Volkswagen is pillaging its archives to come up with the launch advertisement, featuring the infamous ‘Think Small’ strapline, which trumpeted the international success of the Beetle in the 1960s. ‘The “Think Small” slogan symbolises Volkswagen’s achievement in democratising mobility the world over. The challenge of the future lies in achieving efficient and sustainable mobility for everyone. This is expressed by the campaign: “Think Small” has become “Think Blue”,’ Luca de Meo, Head of Marketing at Volkswagen Passenger Cars explains.

PoloDriver may not be at the 2010 Geneva motor show physically, but, fresh from Volkswagen’s now-traditional evening press conference, are these two new footage clips showing the forthcoming Polo GTI and CrossPolo in action. Along with world debuts for both the new Sharan and Touareg, the latest variants of Volkswagen’s fifth-generation supermini were unveiled to the press yesterday.

Filmed in what appears to be an Arctic wasteland (but was more than likely somewhere in snow-covered northern Europe), both new pieces of Volkswagen film show the Polo GTI and CrossPolo doing lurid tail-out drifts in the frozen white stuff, while various close-up shots zoom in on the details of the cars that we’ve not yet seen much of. And, in the case of the CrossPolo, there’s an extra reason to celebrate – Magma Orange is back!

Both clips herald the arrival of the PoloDriver YouTube channel. We hope to bring you more footage from Volkswagen, as well as TV commercials and other short films of Polos in action. Click on the videos below to see the clips of the newest additions to the Polo family and head here to subscribe to PoloDriverTV.

While Polos are obviously our main interest here at PoloDriver, we do have a roving eye for most other Volkswagen models, too. So, last summer, we took a 1.2-litre Fox Urban to the North York Moors for a 1200-mile road test to see if Volkswagen’s city car can do most of what the Polo can do, but for £2000 less. Can the smaller, Brazilian-built town tiddler be a true cut-price Polo alternative, and is there character busting to get out under all that functional practicality? For answers to these questions and more about the global Fox family, read our digital mini-mag (previewed below) here.