“We started just before Christmas 2022, with the first sketches and ideas of what a Volkswagen should look like, and since then we’ve been evolving that,” recalls Grünitz. “This was the first time that I had the possibility to start from the very first sketches until the presentation of a finished vehicle, over a three-year period. Usually as a technician you start something and end up elsewhere. With this car I’ve been involved from design to production.”
That extended involvement has given Grünitz the opportunity to “really leave my fingerprint” on the project, but there is a caveat, he adds: “What’s important is that this is not a car made for me. That’s often what we’ve done in the past, a car made for [former chiefs Ferdinand] Piech or [Martin] Winterkorn. But this is a car made for our customers: it’s not about being perfect for me from a design or technology perspective.
“When developing this car we really asked our customers a lot about what they wanted from this sort of vehicle, and we did a lot of studies and focus groups. This is not a vehicle for board members, but a vehicle for customers.”
The astonishing admission that Volkswagen (the literal people’s car) has in the past focused more on what board members design than what customers want is striking if not entirely a surprise, given some of Piech’s eye-wateringly expensive vanity projects, such as the W16 engine. But recognising these past failures, echoing many of Schäfer’s acknowledgements of how Volkswagen lost its way, is an encouraging sign that Grünitz knows what to put right.
Interestingly, what is now the ID Polo began life as a concept focused purely on reviving VW’s design language, and Mindt has admitted it has required a touch of design retconning to add subtle nods to its ICE sibling. When it came to dynamics, Grünitz says: “We didn’t focus that much on creating a Polo; we focused on bringing back a real Volkswagen. That was the focus from every perspective: design, material, price point, functions. That guided us through the development process.
The ID Polo will also become the first electric model offered with a GTI version. Previous ID models have been natively rear-driven and with high-powered all-wheel-drive GTX range-toppers, but both the ID Polo and GTI will be powered from the front. Grünitz is clearly excited by the prospect of developing a new GTI, but that’s not a surprise given he has spent a good chunk of his time over the past few years trying to source a Golf GTI from the year of his birth.
