"I often wondered what it was that drove Lech Wałęsa to stand up to the mightiest military machine the world has ever seen? Why did a shipyard worker from Gdańsk take on the Soviet Union? By now is all becoming abundantly clear. The man wanted a new car!!!"
"Built by Communists out of steel so thin you could use it as a neck curtain, it is as reliable and as long-lasting as a pensioner's erection."
- Jeremy Clarkson on the Polonez
The FSO Polonez is a motor vehicle that was developed in Poland in collaboration with Fiat and produced by Fabryka Samochodów Osobowych from 1978 to 2002. It was based on the Polski Fiat 125p platform with a new hatchback design by Zbigniew Wattson and Walter de Silva. It was available in a variety of body styles that included two- and four-door compact-sized cars, station wagons, as well as commercial versions that included pickup truck and ambulance uses. Production totaled more than one million units excluding both pick-up and van variants. The Polonez was marketed in other nations and was popular in its domestic market until Poland joined the European Union in 2004.
The car's name comes from the Polish dance, the polonaise, and was chosen through a readers' poll conducted by the newspaper Życie Warszawy.
Appearances[]
- The Polonez was reviewed in an 1983 episode of Old Top Gear.
- In Apocalypse Clarkson, Jeremy Clarkson criticizes the car for its lack of power, clunking gearbox, handling and styling. He describes the Polonez as "the horror" and at the end, he proceedes to blow up two cars in a game of conkers and throw another Polonez down from a crane from a great height.
- In Series 12, Episode 6 of Top Gear, during a segment on Communist cars, the pickup variant of the FSO Polonez was dropped from a crane to test its durability. The Polonez didn't survive the impact.
- In Top Gear: The Worst Car in the History of the World, Jeremy Clarkson derided the Polonez for its poor build quality, ugly design and being very unreliable, as its engine kept breaking down. The Polonez later competed against James May's Mahindra CJ540 Jeep in a quarter-mile drag race and won.
- The Polonez appears in The Grand Tour special "Lochdown", where American and Soviet cars are compared to determine who made worse cars. The Polonez was a third destroyed car out of six.