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Volkswagen Polo GTI
The Polo needed a litre of oil this month. Dobie hopes it’s not a sign of trouble ahead
'Easy-going’ was how I described life with the Polo last month. Since then, I’ve received several emails from evo readers and members of www.polodriver.com alerting me to cars with high oil consumption. It seems a batch of early twin-charged 1.4 TSIs have suffered from faulty piston rings, with a small handful of cars needing new engines.
As if on cue, with the odometer reading just shy of 6500 miles (around 4000 of them with evo), on popped the oil warning light on our Polo. The handbook suggests consumption of up to 1 litre per 2000km (1243 miles) is possible, so this is well within tolerances, and a butcher’s around the manuals of other VW group cars revealed this to be a blanket warning.
One litre of Castrol Edge Sport later, the engine was topped up again, but with my head under the bonnet I noticed the coolant was also running low. Around 600ml of Halford’s finest later, it’s back to the maximum mark too.
I’ll be keeping my eye on both fluid levels from now on, and would love you to share any 1.4-litre TSI experiences with me via firstname.lastname@example.org
|Date acquired||June 2011|
|Costs this month||£16 (oil, 1 litre), £12 (coolant, 2 litres)|
|Mileage this month||1844|
|MPG this month||38.4|