In a long-ago road test of the Rover Streetwise, my father summed up that car's quirky appeal by saying that "if this is the kind of car you want, then this is the car there is". Both he and the Streetwise are gone now, but the demand for urban on-roaders (as Rover called them) is still being catered for. Volkswagen's version of "the car there is" is the Dune, a strange device which is to the Polo and the Streetwise was to the 25 - a small hatchback that pretends to be a mini off-roader when in fact it is nothing of the sort.
This isn't the first Dune Volkswagen has made. Production of the original model stopped for a little while to take into account the Polo's 2005 relaunch (amounting to only slightly more than a facelift). The new Dune isn't remarkably different from the old, and the concept remains the same: take a Polo 1.4 five-door - perhaps a 70bhp TDI turbo diesel, though I'm testing a 75bhp petrol version here - and add various bits and pieces to make it look phunky and phat.
The items in question include 17" BBS alloy wheels, Dune-specific front and rear bumpers, protection for the sides and wheelarches, silver roof rails and door mirrors, a slightly sporty interior and road springs which raise the suspension by 20mm. Despite occasional suspicion that the Dune has four-wheel drive, it actually doesn't - the transmission is absolutely standard, with a five-speed manual gearbox linking the engine to the front wheels only.
Not one solitary particle of the items on the above list does anything whatever to turn the Dune into anything that might be considered an off-roader. The raised ride height might be useful for dealing with sleeping policemen, but it won't help you climb Ben Nevis. And all this is fine, because Dune buyers don't want to climb anything more challenging than a map of Ben Nevis. They just want to buy into the SUV thang without going to all the trouble and expense of buying an actual SUV.
Or at least Volkswagen believes this to be the case. VW people say that although sales of the original Dune were limited, they were several times higher than the intended production run. And it would have made no sense at all to create a facelifted Dune if its predecessor had not been proved to be a success.
As a driving machine, the Dune feels more or less like a regular Polo. Apart from the slightly more up-in-the-air stance, the increased ride height is most obvious in the way the car handles. It's not a great idea to make a car run higher than standard without a good reason, and as we know the Dune is not notable for having good reasons for things, but the effect here is limited to marginally twitchier ride and handling. It's enough to enhance the mock-SUV impression, yet not enough to be a matter for concern.
Other than that, you might as well be in a non-Dune Polo. That's what I felt when I was driving the test car, at least. But when I got out and had another look, I couldn't help thinking that the Dune does seema bit special in a quirky sort of way, thanks especially to those neat BBS alloys. Looking back at a commonplace Polo would not have produced the same effect.
I'm not personally a fan of the Dune concept, but I can appreciate that other people might be, and there's nothing about it that causes offence. If you're more in tune with the idea of an amusing SUV pretender which doesn't have serious ideas above its station, then - as the man said - this is the car there is.
