Watch a WRX champ go full Gymkhana by doing wild skids in a VW Polo

It’s not often we get excited by marketing stunts or adverts produced by the world’s carmakers these days. Gone are the days of Jag’s brilliantly sinister Rendezvous campaign for the F-Type and BMW’s star-studded series The Driver.

And yet, Volkswagen has just hit us with a massive surprise by releasing a proper Gymkhana video to celebrate the Polo’s 50th birthday. Have a watch below as seven-time FIA World Rallycross Champion and two-time Gymkhana Grid Champion Johan Kristoffersson skids around the port and the Polo plant in Gqeberha, South Africa.

The video begins with Kristoffersson back behind the wheel of the 562bhp Polo R Supercar which he took to two World Rallycross championship wins in 2017 and 2018. We’re getting proper old-school Ken Block vibes from this section.

The Swede then swaps into a 311bhp Polo R WRC car from 2013 as he heads towards the factory in Kariega. Excellent Harlequin liveries on both of the cars so far, too. We won’t drop too many more spoilers, but you’ll also see an appearance from a 671bhp Polo RX1e – the all-electric Rallycross car that gave Kristoffersson his 2022 and 2023 world titles. And there’s a cameo from the upcoming ID. Polo at the end.

“The shoot was a huge pleasure for me,” said Kristoffersson, rather unsurprisingly. “It was a great experience to drive the sporty Polo models one after the other and push them to their limits – their characters are different, but they all performed equally really well.”

The whole thing was directed by TG telly wizard Jon Richards, and well, you just need to watch it right now…