Everyone has their preferences, but this would not be a factor for me. I rarely run the radio/music, but I care deeply about handling and fun to drive qualities. Yep, I am a car geek.
I can understand your POV. Americans don’t get the full array of hot hatches the ROW gets, so choices are already constrained. And even expanding the category to things that aren’t really hatches, the sub-$40k performance small car category is sparse here. Sparser if you can’t have RWD, and would be otherwise willing to include stuff like Mustangs and Camaros.
Corporate mentality is a legitimate reason for shunning a brand, no argument there. My take is simply that they’re all hideous companies. The history of automotive shenanigans is pretty dismal across the board. Perhaps if I was a better person I’d ditch VW but they happen to make the two lines of cars I am most likely to own, the VW for the present and my aspirational Audi. Porsche would be there but I’m realistic, ain’t never gonna happen. And the other German makes are pretty much tarred with the same brush as VW, particularly over in Europe.
I’ve owned three Fords, a Mustang GT, a Focus ST, and a Fusion Sport. My wife still has an Escape. I like their cars in general, but lately their interior design doesn’t do it for me, the Focus ST is long in the tooth, the RS is going out and has an engine that blows up (and looks too wild on the outside for me anyhow), and Fusion Sport is, well, nice, but too much Fusion, not enough Sport. The Fiesta ST is also on its way out, though it supposedly was a real hoot for a cheap fast ride. But I can’t see myself buying anything Ford makes at this point, even though I’d go with them long before I’d go with anything from GM. GM simply has no exciting small cars, period. Nada. Dodge has muscle cars that are porky, humongous, and fast, but, well, just no.
The rest of your list is spot on, though if I went to a slightly bigger car an Accord is less ugly than a Civic and with the 2.0 pretty frickin’ quick. But the Sport only comes with lower trim stuff; to get all the goodies, you have to give up the manual, which is a bummer. Had a WRX, and it came pre-grunged. Loved to drive it, hated to be in it. It’s ancient now and while a lot better value than the STI, it’s still in my book not competitive until the new version comes out. Minis are not performance oriented, they’re style oriented, and as you note, not mini and definitely BMW priced.
I love the Mazda 3 look and the interior is good. The engine is anemic and I agree, they desperately need a Mazdaspeed version to attract someone like me. Not that they care I’m sure.
Luckily, my Golf R is a 2016 and I’ve only got 16000 miles on it. Even the Vermont winters, which slowly pound the outside until every car looks like it was beaten on by a demented car wash filled with clowns, haven’t been able to take the fun out of it, so I have a few years I hope before I have to even think about anything new. By them I hope to 1) be able to find a car I like in a sea of SUVs and electrics, and 2) be able to afford what I want, which if I had to buy something today and had the money would be something like an A4, a M240i, or if Santa was really nice, a C43. But the world of affordable fun is pretty narrow.
Hrm.
Volkswagen said Tuesday that its headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, was searched again by prosecutors in early March as part of a probe into its diesel emissions-cheating scandal, confirming a magazine report.
Germany’s Wirtschaftswoche reported earlier on Tuesday that state prosecutors had started fresh investigations into suspicions of market manipulation at the company to determine whether Volkswagen had understated carbon dioxide emissions on more vehicles than it had publicly admitted. […]
The authorities added they were checking a statement issued by VW on December 9, 2015, over suspicions its contents were not correct and could therefore represent a case of severe market manipulation.
VW had claimed its own investigations found it had understated fuel consumption and hence CO2 emissions for no more than 36,000 vehicles.
That was much lower than its own preliminary estimate of around 800,000 cars as disclosed five weeks earlier.
The ad-hoc statement provided some relief as the company battled the fallout from emissions-cheating revelations coming from US regulators in September 2015.
A VW spokesman on Tuesday merely confirmed the latest searches by prosecutors, but declined to comment on any suspicions of market manipulation.
There have been several searches of Audi HQ and some employees’ homes as well. Meanwhile and in spite of the massive fines imposed on the company, VW is reporting record profits.
The sad thing is, the VW group has some very attractive products in its portfolio (all the Golfs, particularly the GTI/R, most Audis, and of course Porsches). In some segments, like in the USA the Golf GTI/Golf R, VW offers things that pretty much no one else does, and in the luxury car arena Audi consistently wins critical acclaim for its combination of quality, performance, and consistency, which are usually rated above those of BMW and Mercedes.
Which makes it really ugly, because for folks like me who love their VW group cars, the constant slide into even more odious villainy by the company poses a crisis of conscience. There are really very very few cars from any manufacturer that meet my requirements as well as (forget better than) the ones from the VW group. Ditching them as a matter of principle would result in owning a car I didn’t want (barring, um, someone getting me enough scratch to buy the AMG Merc I want), and that’s a tough pill to swallow for a consumer protest of limited meaning. For me, at least. YMMV.
Tell me about it, I’m a sucker for Golf GTIs and Rs and feel exactly the same way. I’m still considering a Golf R Variant as my next car and it seems like VW isn’t exactly unique in their brazenness, as BMW’s HQ was just raided by the state attorney’s office a few hours ago.
I am guessing you are in Europe? Europeans get a lot more variety from the German automakers it seems, though I would not want to pay what you guys have to pay for cars (or gas).
Erm, I own one. He mentioned a Golf R Variant, and as there are no “variants” of the R in the USA, just the, well, plain R (hardly any options for '18 either, one trim level), I assume he’s in Europe where there are things like Golf R wagons and stuff.
Funny thing about the US, though, is that even though the 2018 Golf Rs have been available since September, they have all been sitting in a big lot in Florida until just this past week, when VW finally (for reasons unknown to anyone outside of VW apparently) they were released to dealers and orders were allowed to be taken. You still can’t spec a '18 out on the VW configurator I don’t think, and some speculate you won’t be able to before they get to the 2019s. It’s been quite a clusterfuck.
Doesn’t the plain R have all the options of the top GTI though? Reading the manual for my car is frustrating, it’s lacking so many features it feels like I bought the base model (mines an SE). Ironically the lowest level Golf shares the same owners manual as the R. I would be sad if I just bought my first regular Golf and was reading about everything it doesn’t have.
Still absolutely love my car. So much fun to drive. I am going out to drive on Saturday mornings just for fun. I am devastated that I scratched the hell out of the plastic covering the instrument panel already though. I used a dry microfiber cloth. Looks like hell when the sun hits it. Which leads to my next point, why the heck is VW still using analog gauges in the States? They have LCDs in Europe.
Only thing I am still not sure about is the engine turning itself off at stops. It defaults to on, so you have to turn it off every time you start the car. I do like it for really bad traffic with long red lights, but for most driving, it’s a bit of a pain. Seems like it would be hard on the engine as well.
My new Volvo does this too and it’s very nearly a dealbreaker. I hate it. HATE HATE HATE. The extra mileage is tiny and not even close to worth making it default behavior.
Yes, the current R comes with pretty much what you’d get on the Autobahn trim; I think the only actual options are the DAP stuff (active safety). When I got mine though they still had a base model, the only one I could find anywhere near me, which was fine, though I do miss the DCC (adaptive suspension) and the Fender audio system (both of which are standard on the R now).
And yeah, the manuals are often bizarre. A guy on the forums I frequent just picked up his 2018 R (in Canada, where they have been available for quite a while already) and it came with a Golf Sportwagon manual for some reason. They save money I guess by just having one manual that explains all the buttons you don’t have.
And the 2018 Rs have a virtual (digital) display, though some sources claim that was one of the reasons the car sat in Florida for so long. Some folks allege VW found out the displays were likely to burn out/die too soon or something. It’s not the same virtual cockpit that Audi has, but a somewhat lesser (but still pretty cool) digital system. A friend of mine has an A5 Sportback with the Virtual Cockpit and it’s wicked cool.
I had a rental Malibu that did this. It was pretty unobtrusive though, probably because the rental car had like a lawnmower engine or something.
I can only assume companies do this because it allows them to set up ideal situations with the EPA for MPG testing. In everyday use, it seems…dumb.
I’m almost certainly going to buy a GTI.
SOMEONE TRY TO STOP ME.
It’s not about mileage. It’s about emissions. In a city, all those cars stopped at lights are putting out a ton of pollutants.
I would say you came to the wrong thread, since this is kind is an anti VW thread, but I absolutely love my GTI. Probably not saying much, but easily the best car I have ever owned. Pretty much every review I have read/watched love it as well though.
I am in the process of buying a car and I hate it. I hate spending money on something that sits outside my work for 10 hours a day and sits outside my house for 13 hours a day and gets driven for no more than 1 hour a day max.
I like the VW stuff as well as the Audi stuff, they look great, modern, lots of goodies on them as well. However in the UK they really still hold their value well.
I have 10k to spend, well that’s the max I want to spend and this car will last me until it’s no longer up to being on the road.
I do struggle to understand how people can spend so much a month or upfront to just have it sit unused. Roads in the UK are crammed, the joys of open road driving are long gone. Living in Bournemouth / Poole we are one of the most congested areas outside of major cities in the UK.
So what the hell to buy for between 8k and 10k that will be lucky to do 5k miles a year and only get used for 1 hour a day which seems like good value.
Don’t underestimate the joys of cutting through traffic. Of course everyone else hates that guy.
Once the weather gets nicer I am planning a long drive in the mountains. In western US, still plenty of open road driving.
lol, not here there isn’t. It’s grid lock in and around the area. I don’t exceed 20 mph for half the journey the rest at 30mph. You could cycle my route quicker due to the stop start nature
Yeah, Reemul hits on the big issue really, which is that if you calculate the price of a car by the hours of actual use, it’s ludicrous, and it gets even more ludicrous the more expensive the car is.
But, like all products, the value of a car is determined not by its technical function but by the role it fulfills for the purchaser. Cars have always, from day one, been more than transport for many people. For many people, and not just driving enthusiasts, the car is simultaneously a mode of transportation, an extension of identity, a symbol of one’s status within society, a place in and of itself that allows the illusion of autonomy and freedom, and a bunch of other stuff. Truly, if everyone analyzed their car purchases like a really anal accountant, the only things that would sell would be commodity-level vehicles in a few distinct segments defined solely by function. That obviously is not the case, so there must be a whole lot of folks who find spending all that money for something that most the time doesn’t actually fulfill its most obvious mechanical function a reasonable proposition.
I mean, where i live traffic isn’t the problem, as there are really few people comparatively, and traffic jams are rare and hardly rise to the level of being noticed by someone from a big city area. But the roads are dreadful, in terms of their quality and driveability, pretty much all my driving is on surface streets or relatively low speed sections of divided highways, with occasional short stints on the interstate highway; the max speed limit even on the interstate is 65 mph, and most of the time I’m on roads with a 35 or 40 mph limit. More importantly, those aren’t roads where you look at the speed limit and think, man, that’s silly; these are roads where you look at the limit and say, yeah, even that might be high. Bicycles, horses, dog walkers, joggers, pedestrians, work crews, wildlife, and of course potholes all share time on the roads, and while there are a few places you can find that allow you to wind it out a bit, they are not places I usually get to.
Logically, I should drive a beat-up Subaru like half the population here, and keep it for 200,000 miles. But instead I drive a car with far more performance than I ever get to use, at far greater cost. I’m good with that because the car fulfills other needs (in addition to somewhat practical ones, such as performance models generally having better quality running gear and often better features and interiors than budget models). But I freely admit it’s totally out of line with any purely material analysis of value.