The Indian arm of German automaker Volkswagen has asked its dealers to keep sales of its popular hatchback Polo on hold.
A letter issued this afternoon to all its dealers – around 118 across India – this afternoon, and signed by Ashish Gupta and Pankaj Sharma head of after sales and sales operations respectively for VW passenger cars – asked dealers to stop deliveries of all variants of the car with immediate effect.
Responding to a query, a spokesperson for VW in India said that the issue was `engine independent’, and pertained to both petrol and diesel cars. In the last few days, the automaker has been facing severe recrimination globally for tampering with engines to produce better emission results during lab tests. A total of 11 million cars had been fitted with the software, it had said.
As a diesel engine of the same family of EA 189 engines is also made in India, VW has said that the engines are also being tested at its headquarters in Germany.
A dealer who did not wish to be named said that a manufacturing problem on a particular batch was the reason for the “stop sale” directive. “The company is identifying the affected chassis numbers,” he said.