The facelifted Volkswagen Polo Vivo was launched in South Africa this week, and with that came much speculation about its future.
The current version has been around as a Vivo since 2018, and it’s based on the fifth-generation Polo first launched in 2010.
A natural assumption is that the current Polo, which is the first to be built on Volkswagen’s MQB platform, will eventually become a Polo Vivo, but that is not currently on the cards, according to Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) CEO Martina Biene.
She said the company had conducted feasibility studies into such a car, but the so-called third-product, which is a new entry-level SUV set to be built at the local Kariega plant in the Eastern Cape from 2027, has complicated that business case.
When asked about a new Vivo based on the current Polo, Biene said:
“We have had some project thoughts on exactly what you’re saying. So we get the third product in by 2027, which is an AO SUV, and then we were thinking what’s then the next third product because one day they (the Polo) will run out.
“We’ve done some evaluations of turning the current Polo into a Vivo, as a hedge, and the unfortunate thing was that the substitution, the cross shopping between our new entry SUV model and a Polo, is far too high for feasibility. Because there’s no point in just swapping the cars around.
“So now we are looking into what’s the successor of the Vivo one day, and it might be a completely different car because, from a mathematics perspective, it didn’t work out to take the Polo into a Vivo after that,” Biene added.
Another VWSA source told IOL that at present it would be prohibitively expensive to adapt the current Vivo’s locally built MPI normally aspirated engines to the current Polo’s MQB platform.
Interestingly Brazil sells an entry version of the pre-facelift Polo, called the Polo Track, which looks very much like a Vivo equivalent. It is powered by a 1.0-litre normally aspirated engine, which would not be suitable for our market however.
With buyers moving rapidly towards SUV products, which now account for more than half of passenger vehicle sales, it seems inevitable that the new entry SUV could become VWSA’s top-selling product, possibly cannibalising the current Vivo if it came in at a low enough price point.
It’s way too early to speculate on how the new SUV will be priced but the company has previously indicated that it would be positioned below the T-Cross.
The vehicle, which has yet to be revealed, is being developed in conjunction with Volkswagen’s Brazilian arm, and it will share its underpinnings with the current Polo.
It will be built at the Kariega plant in the Eastern Cape from 2027 as part of a R4 billion investment that was announced in April this year.
Though a Brazilian development, set to be adapted for Africa, it has been speculated that the upcoming compact SUV could be based on the Skoda Kylaq, which was recently previewed for the Indian market.
But where does all of this leave the Polo, whose export sales currently account for 70% of the local Kariega plant’s output?
Internationally, the Polo has been given an execution of stay until 2030, thanks to Europe’s softer-than-expected Euro 7 emissions laws.
But with no known plans for a new internal combustion engine Polo after that, the Kariega plant could be facing a significant loss of production output if other new products, with lucrative export contracts attached to them, are not introduced.
Electric cars appear to be out of the question for now as Europe has more than sufficient capacity for those at present.
The compact SUV is unlikely to be earmarked for Europe as it is being developed with emerging markets in mind.
There has been speculation that a Brazilian bakkie offshoot of the upcoming baby SUV could be built at the local plant too, but even this is unlikely to plug the Polo gap.
With VWSA becoming more Africa-focused, it appears that the local division’s future success will very much depend on the growth of vehicle markets on the continent.
IOL Motoring