My son has a 2002 polo ES with the 1.4lt 16v engine that makes a whopping 55kw and although its a nice car to drive it could use a bit more poke. In the manual that comes with the car it states there is also a 75kw version of the same engine, can anyone tell me what differences there were to make the extra power? Being young he dreams of a 500hp twin turbo R32 golf which I'm sure one day he will get ,(we want him to buy a house first haha) but in the mean time a little bit more power would keep him happy.

As far as I'm aware the Australian-market Polos of that time only came with your 55 kW 1.4 engine (as did the earlier '16V' model with the same engine). It wasn't until 2004 that the 74 kW 1.6 engine was an option. The other options - such as the 74 kW 1.4, or the 3-cyl 1.2 TDI, or the 1.4 TDI and 1.9 TDI, were for Europe only and weren't sold here.

It's amazing how perspectives change. 55 KW is 75 PS (DIN hp), or around 90 bhp SAE. That is significantly more than any stock air-cooled engine, and very difficult to achieve from a much larger modified VW engine with anywhere near the same level of reliability, let alone refinement and quietness, of the Polo engine. If the Polo can happily maintain the speed limit, and keep up with normal traffic, I'm not sure why he would need more power?

Ring Matt at Camden GTI (02) 4627 3072 to see what can be done to extract a little more power from the 1.4, and how much it will cost. I would think the 1.6 from the later Polo or Golf would fit in without trouble.

check out vwwatercooled vwtx
or fit a 1,8 L

from Cordoba vroom

http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/forums/forum.php 

look at a later model head fit up....