2023 Volkswagen Polo Owner’s Manual

With almost half a century in production, the Volkswagen Polo, which offers a smaller alternative to its trusty Golf, is one of the brand’s most successful nameplates, and it continues to fly off the car lot.

This status earned by the Polo is unsurprising considering that it inherits all the cultured features and refined road manners of its bigger brother, presenting them in a slightly smaller package and at a more attractive price point. For 2023, the new release does nothing to tweak this formula and deviate from its favored path.

The Volkswagen Polo, which switched to its sixth generation in 2017, last received a notable facelift in 2021 that brought in a new, updated fascia and upgraded the LED lights and infotainment system to match other contemporary offerings from Volkswagen. The 2023 Volkswagen Polo builds on this facelift, adding only a few sharper lines and slight updates to the LED strip and bumpers.

Like the previous Polo, the 2023 model is available in four trim levels: Life, Style, R-Line, and GTI, in order of increasing price. The style offers a more comfort-focused upgrade to the base Life. The R-Line packs a sportier approach, while the range-topping GTI trim goes all out with performance focus and added accouterments.

While most similarly-sized cars are pivoting harder towards an electrified state, Volkswagen is sticking to its guns with the Polo, producing yet another year’s release strictly with combustion engines and no hybrid or full-electric option. However, the brand does ship this year’s engines with a stop/start system that stops the engine when idling to limit excess fuel consumption.

The powertrain options include a base 1-liter naturally aspirated 3-cylinder engine that makes 79 horsepower and pairs with a five-speed manual transmission as the standard offering the Life trim, a 93-HP turbocharged version (with an optional seven-speed DSG automatic transmission) that is an available option on the Life, Style, and R-Line trims, and an even better tuned 108-HP variant that is a selectable add-on only on the R-Line trim and can be paired only with the DSG automatic.

However, the 204-horsepower 2-liter 4-cylinder engine that comes standard on the GTI trim paired with the DSG dwarfs everything else performance-wise.