Volkswagen South Africa has just built its 2-millionth Polo at its local plant in Kariega (formerly Uitenhage), in the Eastern Cape.
The milestone vehicle, a left-hand drive Polo hatchback, rolled off the production line on Tuesday, December 6, and it’s destined for Germany.
More than half of the locally built Polos (or 1 065 718 units to be exact) have been exported to other countries, and VWSA currently supplies 38 markets with both left-hand drive and right-hand drive cars. Kariega is also the only plant in the world that produces the Polo GTI.
Locally, the company has sold 561 098 Polos and 373 184 Polo Vivos, which are previous generation Polos.
The Volkswagen Polo was first introduced to South Africa in 1996, but instead of the Euro-spec model our plant built the seat-based Polo Classic sedan and Polo Playa hatchback, the latter being a uniquely South Africa creation based on the Ibiza from Spain. VWSA sold 95 385 examples of this generation.
The subsequent generation was introduced in 2002, and this time around we got the European model, which also kick-started the Polo’s export career and helped it achieve a total local production volume of 282 005 units.
The third local generation, and fifth internationally, hit the scene in 2010 and this model really kicked things up a notch in export terms, with a total production number of 692 469. The current Polo, introduced in 2018, has so far amassed a local production number of 556 957, and will almost certainly surpass its predecessor by the end of its life cycle.
Alas, the future of the Polo remains uncertain at this point, and Volkswagen is said to be debating whether it’s even worth developing a next-generation model given that upcoming pollution laws in Europe could push the price up to the point where it’s unfeasible. Read more on that story here.
Thankfully, VWSA is currently lobbying for a new “SUV-type” compact model to be built locally to lessen its dependence on European Polo exports.