Volkswagen has taken first orders of its new Polo GTI R5 rally car, with teams around the world set to receive the new racer in the coming months.
15 cars have been specially-developed for rallying and rallycross events with customer teams able to purchase the 268bhp racer for use in international competitions.
The 0-60mph time of 1,230kg car is 3.9 seconds and it employs four-wheel drive so that it can tackle anything from loose gravel to snow, and ice to tarmac. The 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine is paired to a five-speed sequential gearbox.
First unveiled in December, the R5 will be received by the teams in the latter half of this year after the car has fully passed homologation rules to make it race-legal. Teams from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Italy and Sweden are among the lucky few to get the racer.
Sven Smeets, Volkswagen Motorsport director, said: “We are overwhelmed by the positive feedback on the Polo GTI R5.
“The customer demand is enormous. We are obviously pleased about this, and it is an additional motivation to provide the teams with the best possible rally car.”
Juliane Gründl, head of sales and distribution at Volkswagen Motorsport, added: “We assemble each car by hand in our workshop in Hannover.
“We are on schedule. However, we are still in the process of structuring production, and in the implementation phase in the aftersales area. We obviously want to be ideally positioned in time for the sales launch.”
The Polo does have history in the rallying, with the last generation was used as the base for the four-time World Rally Championship-winning car ran by the Volkswagen Motorsport rally team between 2013 and 2016.
At the hands of Sebastien Ogier, Jari-Matti Latvala and Andreas Mikkelson, the Polo R WRC won 43 races in a four-year stretch – making it one of the most successful rally cars of all time.
