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" It is obvious Volkswagen is taking its first ever foray into a top echelon FIA World Championship serious extremely seriously. A year ago I visited the Volkswagen Motorsports HQ in Hanover, Germany and saw the very first prototype Volkswagen Polo WRC bodyshell being assembled. Since then the team has been relentlessly testing the car at locations all over the world. As part of the &amp;quot;test&amp;quot; program Volkswagen entered S\u00E9bastien Ogier, its number one driver, in a Skoda Fabia Super 2000 in the junior S2000 division in WRC events in the past year as the team learned the ropes involved in the real world of actual completion. On several occasions Ogier astounded insiders by finishing as high as fifth overall, despite being in a far less powerful car.  On Saturday Volkswagen unveiled the actual Polo WRC rally car in its race livery. Although it&amp;#039;s primary sponsor is Red Bull it is not adorned in the more usual bright blue and red colors, such as last year&amp;#039;s championship-winning Citroen WRC cars. Instead the VW Polo R WRC is painted in more subtle white and blue.  The unveiling was shown live on via the Internet and featured none other than Jacky Ickx as the main commentator and translator as the unveiling was held in English and then translated into French for the hundreds of fans and media gathered outside the famous casino in Monte Carlo. This is of course where the first rally of the 2013 WRC season will take place in January. Volkswagen hopes that its top-notch three-car team will perform well in its first year on the circuit. Ogier left the Citroen team a year ago and he has been joined by Jari-Matti Latvala who drove for the Ford WRC team for several seasons. The third driver is Andreas Mikkelsen who drove a second Skoda during the past season. As part of the homologation process required for rallying, Volkswagen has to sell road-going versions of the rally car. Rather than delay this some time it has simultaneously introduced the street-legal cars that 2500 people can buy in Europe. It goes on sale today in Europe at a price of about $40,000. The front-wheel drive VW Polo R WRC is powered by a 2.0-liter TSI engine producing 217 bhp and 258 lb.-ft. of torque. It has a six-speed short-shift manual transmission and Volkswagen says it has top speed of 151 mph and a 0-62 mpgh time of 6.4 seconds. On paper it looks like it&amp;#039;ll outperform the Ford Fiesta ST. Related posts:  VW&amp;#039;s Polo R WRC Begins Testing Volkswagen Unveils Golf Cabrio Concepts Just Released: New Version of VW Super Bowl Ad Hot Polo GTI World&amp;#039;s Quickest Road-Legal Car Sets the Record at Santa Pod Raceway  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/news/a3730/volkswagen-unveils-wrc-polo-plus-a-street-legal-version/>