Volkswagen Polo Review, For Sale, Colours, Interior, Specs & News

Volkswagen Polo Q&As

Check out real-world situations relating to the Volkswagen Polo here, particularly what our experts have to say about them.

• Are there known problems with the 2018 Volkswagen Polo's dual-clutch auto?

  Some owners have had a great run with this transmission, others not so much. Highway driving will be kinder to the unit, and a lot of city driving will be harder on it (although the DSG gearbox is by no means alone there).

  The main wear issues are with the clutch-packs that control the transmission. These can wear prematurely and require costly replacement. Any shuddering when taking off from rest is the first sign that this process has already started.

  It’s possible to read too much into it, but it remains that VW itself dumped the DSG for a conventional torque converter for some of its Australian models, including the Polo, in 2021.

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• The gearbox on my 2016 Volkswagen Polo has failed

  The seven-speed DSG transmission in your car is a known trouble-spot and has caused lots of grief for owners over the years. Failures can occur in the clutch-packs, the electronic control units or the gearsets themselves and, once the failure has occurred, it's usually time for a whole new transmission.

  Mechanics can often become a bit jaded when they see multiple failures of the same component, but in this case, they're probably right. Your problem then becomes one of the cost of repairs being more than the repaired car is worth.

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• Oil pressure issues in a Volkswagen Polo TSI

  You could well be on the right track here. Many cars with transmission coolers place them in the car's radiator so that the liquid that cools the engine, also cools the transmission. But if the transmission cooler fails, that can allow transmission fluid into the car's coolant system which might account for the oil you're seeing in your coolant bottle. Many mis-diagnose this as a blown head gasket because the outward symptoms are very similar.

  If this is the case, the bad news is that coolant has probably also entered the transmission potentially wrecking the mechanical parts and frying the electronic bits.

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• My Volkswagen Polo TSi 1.4 is mixing water and oil which is then coming out through the exhaust

  None of these symptoms are what you want to find. Any car mixing its coolant with its engine oil has some kind of internal failure (often a head gasket failure) and a car that is consuming oil at a fast rate is also probably suffering some kind of internal damage or wear. Have a mechanic perform a few basic tests on the engine (compression, leak-down and head-gasket) and proceed from there. But if it's as bad as it sounds, you could be looking for a new engine (or a new car).

  These engines were known for being quite complex and perhaps not as durable as they should have been in some cases. They're also quite expensive to rebuild and may cost more to fix than the entire car is worth. At that point, you have some tough decisions to make.

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