Volkswagen has ended production of the Polo in Europe after 40 years as the company shifts its focus to electric vehicles (EVs). As reported by Automotive News Europe, the Polo had been built at the carmaker’s plant in Pamplona, Spain since 1984, but the facility will be revised to assemble two new small EVs based on the MEB platform starting in 2026.
The Polo isn’t going away though as it is still an important model for the brand, with just over 90,000 units sold in the first eight months of the year to become the eighth best-selling car across Europe. Instead, South Africa will become the sole country to produce the Polo at Volkswagen’s Kariega plant.
Over the past 40 years, over 8.4 million units of the Polo were built in Spain. While it still finds its fair share of buyers today, sales of the model have been overtaken by small crossovers like the T-Roc. Despite new EVs set to join the assembly lines of the Pamplona site, Volkswagen will continue to build the T-Cross and Taigo at the facility.
On the MEB-based EVs set to debut in the future, the report indicates one will be a Skoda-branded model called the Epiq while the other is said to be badged the ID.2all (previewed as a concept last March) – both will use a front-wheel drive version of the platform.
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Announce production end then 1 year later announce bringing back the iconic model and people rushing to place order. This tactic has been used over and over by car makers.
More like cheaper production
elsewhere than stay in Europe
They were right when they said Polo production costs became expensive with tight emission regulations.