I’ve been pleased with my last two VW Golfs, a GTI and my current R. Certainly in their segment they are hard to beat. Reliability is tough to judge, though, because while there are always cases of normal use resulting in abnormal issues, there is so much non-normal use of cars in this niche that a lot of the complaints about reliability are laughable. Guys who add an ECU flash, a downpipe and catback, swap the turbo, drop the car with coil overs and the like suddenly have issues and it’s, 'VW sucks!" Heh.
As a high quality and pracitcal all around car in a compact package, the Golf is hard to beat. I only realise this now that i’m not driving a Golf for the first time in 15 years. I could never understand my father, who would always drive a Golf despite being able to afford much fancier cars, but i get it now. If they manage to equip the Golf R estate with a trailer hitch or release a GTI estate, i’ll probably go back to the Golf.
The German car industry however does need a serious kick in the butt, even though the problems are hardly restricted to manufacturers from this nation alone.
Bear in mind this is price fixing for suppliers, not consumers. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be a good place for it, personally, but I don’t know all that much about the sector.
Suppliers makes sense, because there is a whole lot of gray area stuff in this regard. In the US, for example, many parts suppliers started out as subsidiaries or outright branches of car makers, and were spun off. A lot of effort went into creating legal and financial structures that at least limited the amount of favoritism between, say, Delphi and GM, for example. Nevertheless, it often turned out that even the nominally independent parts suppliers still had a large portion of their business with their former parent companies. And car makers actually deal directly with parts manufacturers; they don’t deal directly with consumers.
There are a few reasons I don’t think price fixing is terribly likely or would be very effective at the level of the prices consumers pay for cars. One is that the consumer deals with a dealer, not the manufacturer, at least in the USA, and here the dealers have a lot of legally-protected independence. It’s quite hard for a manufacturer these days to pressure dealers much on anything. Even if Ford and GM got together to fix prices, they’d have to get their dealers to go along. The dealers are independent and often have more than one marque they sell, too, so anything that limited their freedom to negotiate with customers would simply have them threaten to start selling, say, Toyotas or whatnot.
Another is that the product, cars, simply doesn’t lend itself to price fixing in my mind. Even though from one angle you can look at cars as appliances, they’re really not. People pick them for a host of often seemingly irrational reasons, and seemingly minor differences in looks, trim, or “feel” determine whether people buy this one or that one. How would you fix prices, say, between a Focus and a Cruze? They appeal to such different audiences and the entire marketing strategy of the manufacturers is based on exploiting those differences–and using price to balance out areas where their model falls short. Manufacturers are always shifting their options, styling, and packaging of deals to get buyers interested, and price fixing would severely limit that flexibility. Besides, I really don’t think any automaker wants the buying public to say “hmm, they’re all the same price in this segment, so lets get the best rated one,” or something like that. A lot of sales are of cars that may not be as highly regarded as others, but which are cheaper.
And then there is the whole segmented market thing. In effect, there is a high degree of commonality in prices across any given market segment already, because the market sort of pushes things this way. Models that compete directly against each other pretty much already cost the same, roughly speaking. There’s no need to sacrifice flexibility in marketing for some sort of price controls. In short, the consumer market for cars works about as well as it can, given the weird manufacturer–>dealer–>consumer set up.
Finally, margins on new car sales are terrible, A while ago I was reading that the best of the bunch, at the time Toyota, was making maybe two grand per car; GM was like under a thousand.That’s selling to dealers, pretty much. Dealers I’ve read are making maybe 4% profit on the average new car. Fixing prices wouldn’t help, unless you raised them astronomically, and then the bottom would fall out of the market worse than it is doing now. The average cost of a new car in the USA is already somewhere around $35k, and more and more people are leasing to avoid massive payments. Not much more blood to be squeezed from the turnip.
Forgive me but I have to crow about this one last time.
I turned my 2009 TDI Jetta in Monday. It had 127K and change miles on it, a smashed windshield and a smashed up passenger side bumper and front quarter panel. It was throwing multiple engine codes and had some lights out. $12475 to me and a ride home from the dealership. In September of 2008 when I bought the car new it was like 25.5 out the door. So almost 9 years and 127K miles later I got almost half of that back? THANK YOU VW!
After driving the car for almost 9 years with almost zero problems (I had the HPFP fail around 80-90K well outside of warranty at the time but VW picked up the tab and later warrantied that part for 100K) it was a fucking tank for me and a great daily driver from an efficiency perspective. I got 36mpg over the life of the car. The scheduled maintenances were what I would call expensive for a car at this price point, but that is my only complaint and looking back it was completely worth it.
And just imagine, if the Left hadn’t seized control of Big Government and made all these dumbass regulations about air quality, you could have driven that Jetta for years yet!
Like I said it was a great car. I only reluctantly accepted the buy back. I initially opted for the ‘fix’ but I got behind on scheduled maintenances and the fix is still not available so I decided to take the buy back rather than put any more money into the car. I read recently that the fix has finally been approved, but there is no stated timeline.
To lose one phone may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose 23 phones looks like destroying evidence.
This seems easy. Compare how many phones were lost/accidentally wiped on average, before the scandal erupted to how many were lost/accidentally wiped after. Then throw all the fuckers in prison for destroying evidence.
It’s not just a VW thing, or even a car thing, it’s a corporate culture thing. It’s interesting comparing, say, the penalties and ongoing litigation about Wells Fargo and that around VW. Arguably, Wells Fargo did far more damage to people than VW ever did, but the penalization seems rather disproportionate.
Not at all sticking up for the VW fuckers though. This whole thing is a clear case of corporate mendacity at its worst.
First one into the slammer.
That’s one expensive Florida vacation. Just another reason to stay out of that state!*
*Well, if you’re a wanted criminal and a foreigner I guess. Domestic wanted felons are probably ok.
I think he’ll probably be more bothered by the 7 year jail sentence. What an idiot for returning for a vacation of all reasons.
It’s been about 14 months since I traded in my Golf TDI, and I have missed it ever since. Not because of the gas mileage so much, because that wasn’t anything special living in a high traffic area, I just really liked that car. It felt like a solid, high quality car. It was comfortable, had some decent power, etc. The Civic Hatchback I replaced it with was fine, but it made me miss my Golf even more.
So I bought a 2018 GTI last night. I am not thrilled with VW’s past behavior, but I really like their cars. The car is very similar to my 2010 TDI as well, VW apparently stick to what they know.
Anyway, so glad to be back.
Never owned a VW (I did have an Audi A4) but I really like some of the stuff they have on the way in the next couple of years.
Welcome back to the VeeDub legions. The Golf GTI/R is a rare beast. It’s a practical hatchback, a grown-up performance car, and has an interior that is not only good but in many respects punches above its weight.
Which trim level did you get? My 2016 R is a base model, the last year they really had base models I think. The only thing I wish I had been able to get really was the DCC, but if I was getting a new model I’d definitely go for DAP too.
What is totally bizarre is that the 2018 Golf Rs have been sitting in Florida for like six months now. Just sitting, wrapped up in their shipping wrappers. Why? No one knows, though the speculation is that it’s either a misfire problem that hasn’t been fixed yet (they shipped all those cars without knowing that???) or it;s an EPA thing, with the EPA playing hardball for obvious reasons and VW having some sort of issue with the EA888 as it’s configured in the R.
I had a 2012 MkVI GTI and loved it. Did you go 6MT or DSG? And what color? That new green is killer.
Thanks, I got a green, DSG, SE (middle model). I wanted a 6MT, but this dealer only had them in Ion Blue or black. The only green ones in the area were DSG (they are still rare apparently). I spent a good 30 minutes debating between the blue manual or the green automatic and finally picked the green because I figured most of my commute is in traffic and I just love the color. I am still second guessing my decision though, the manual was so much more fun to drive. Not that the DSG isn’t, but there is a big difference.
I am not familiar with it all, but I guess this year is a Mk7.5, so next year it will be an updated version? This year is just a refresh?
I asked the saleswoman about the Rs and they said they had one, but that they sell quickly. She didn’t say anything about a hold. Now I am curious if she was hiding something.
Well, all the info I’ve gotten so far says there are no 2018 R’s for sale at US dealers yet, though Canada has them. She could have been talking about a '17, or she could have been doing what dealers normally do, just winging it.
That green color is great, I love it. They have/had one GTI in that color in our sole VW dealership here, an ironically it’s a manual. Both my GTI and R were/are manuals. The DSG is a great transmission, and much quicker than the 6MT. On the GTI I liked the transmission, but on the R I had to put in a short-shift kit, a new knob, and a clutch stop to get it where I wanted it. The R is really designed for that DSG, and the new ones (if they ever appear) have a 7 speed DSG now.
Enjoy the car. It’s an amazing value for what you get, considering the mix of performance, utility, and quality of interior.
I’m jealous of you guys (especially that green car… swoon). I bought a new 2017 Golf about a year ago and it’s the first car I’ve owned that I really love. It was fairly inexpensive, gets very good gas mileage, is fun to drive, and has nice technology/safety features. I would like to upgrade to a GTI or R at some point, but that is probably some ways down the road.