RC Tuned: Stage 3 Polo TDI
All this hardware with a stage 3 tune from Venom Performance India makes the car put down approximately 200 hp and 4 freaking hundred nm of torque!
Well, you might have seen the previous RC Tuned post featuring a red polo; it was flashy fast and loud. This one is quite the opposite; if you saw this car out on the road, you might think that it is a normal polo with fake GTD badging, and I did too, until that one point when this car accelerated past me while I was at an insane speed and I realized something was done to this car. I walk up to Ashwin and ask him, Have you tuned your car? Him being humble said yes. I asked him what tune he was running, and he said stage 3. I was like, whattt?
The Build
The car has the 1.5TDI, which puts out a respectable 108 bhp and 250 nm of torque, which is more than enough for an average Joe. Ashwin got the car while it was at 70k km and did a stage one tune with which he was happy. Unfortunately, at 1 lakh kilometres, the turbo gave up, but instead of replacing it, Ashwin had other plans.
The blown-out turbo was replaced with a Garett Cr170 turbo, which comes with 2.0 TDI cars from the Vag group. Well, to run a bigger turbo, he also had to upgrade the stock intercooler with a stage 3 one from Garett itself. A downpipe was installed for the car to push out exhaust gases without any restriction. The turbo muffler has been deleted, and the rubber charge pipe has been replaced with a custom-fabricated stainless steel one. The air intake is taken care of by an OEM Euro-spec air channel, and the air is passed through an intake pipe from the Fabia VRS. All this hardware with a stage 3 tune from Venom Performance India makes the car put down approximately 200 hp and 4 freaking hundred nm of torque! Another interesting part about this build is that the car still has its stock muffler, which makes sure the car stays silent.
Wheels and Brakes
Braking duties are taken care of by a set of ATE rotors and ATE ceramic pads, which sit in a 288mm MK1 Skoda Octavia Caliper that is painted red. The car is currently on 16-inch wheels from a Slavia and runs 195/55 tyres, which helps Ashwin to drive the car daily. This wheel and tyre configuration does not sit flush with the fenders, so a 10mm CS Racing forged aluminium spacer is added.
Looks
As mentioned above, the car looks super subtle and blends with normal traffic easily. Some of the aesthetic mods include a facelifted bumper, an OEM Polo GTI grill, an OEM GTI taillight, rear bumper skirts, and the mean-looking custom bi-led projector headlights with demon eyes daytime running lights. The car also gets 2 GTD badges near both the front doors.
The interior is also souped up with custom Alcantara seats, which have GTD stitching on the headrests. The infotainment is also upgraded to the latest RCD 340, which has Android Auto and Apple Car Play. The doors are dampened with 3 layers of damping sheets, which improves the overall cabin experience by a bit.
Even after all these insane performance gains, this car is used daily like a stock polo and returns insane fuel economy figures thanks to the tune. While owning a car like this makes you feel proud, you should also take into consideration that you’ll have to be on top of your maintenance game. The car will go through excessive wear and tear compared to a stock or a stage 1 car. Would I do stage 3 if I can? Nah, at the end of the day, it is a small car, and investing so much time and effort into it is really not worth it unless you love the car so much that you can't replace it for some reason.
