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Remember the VW Scirocco in New Street mystery from two weeks ago? It appears that the question mark hanging over the car’s conspicuous appearance on the Capital’s cobbles might have been removed. While flicking through an old edition of the Essex Chronicle newspaper recently, I came across an advertisement for Inchcape Chelmsford, the local Volkswagen retailer.

It was the fact that it was advertising different flavours of Polos which caught my attention initially, but on closer inspection, there was something very familiar about one of the pictures. The images had all been shot for VW, but distinctly weren’t press images, so they had clearly been taken for advertising purposes, on what looked like London streets.

Familiar? The Polo on the right wears the New Street Scirocco reg no

And there it was. The Scirocco had been wearing number plates with the mark RV58 UWY, exactly the same as one of the Polos in the Inchcape copy. Mystery solved. It turns out that it was most probably an advertising shoot after all. Moving around from car to car, this would certainly explain the blue-tinted film on the Scirocco’s centrally-owned number plates. They were clearly brand new, and the film had yet to be removed for road use.

If the press reports are to be believed, the new Volkswagen Scirocco is really hot property at the moment; I’ve not read one negative road test, group shoot-out, or first-drive. But, hot enough to to stop passers-by taking snaps on camera phones and warrant a police cone barrier? It seems that this one is, as Steven would attest to when I met him for lunch, just off Chancery Lane.

This silver example of VW’s scorching new Golf-based coupé was being unloaded at New Street Square, where it was promptly coned off, and left for a few minutes. Burly minders asked for no photos to be taken, further adding to the air of mystery surrounding the sleek car’s arrival. A 2.0-litre TDI might be new for the UK, but as a model, the Scirocco has been well-known and well-received in the UK for a handful of months now, so just what was RV58 UWY doing on the corner of New Street?

A photo shoot seems the obvious answer, although for a magazine or press stills, we’re not sure. The car wasn’t registered with Volkswagen UK’s usual press office registration mark, which would suggest the magazine route, with one of the major monthlies or weeklies taking images to accompany a road test or initial drive. Another option, could, of course, have been filming for a television motoring magazine.

If you were in the area of New Street Square, London, this lunchtime and saw the Scirocco, let us know what you think it was parked there for, or if you are one of the burly minders or even the car’s low-loader driver, drop us a comment below, and help us solve the mystery.