The Fit gets consistently good reviews, but it is substantially cheaper as noted here. The VW dealer in my town sells mostly Alltracks, the AWD Golf wagons. They have like five times as many on the lot as they do Golfs.
The Giulia is a beautiful car. Trouble is, that “under $35k” is very misleading. In this segment, no one buys a base model, because the base model lacks most everything you expect to get at that price point. I’ve priced out the four cylinder Giulias and the cheapest I could get one that would have the same level of equipment as my car would top be very close to $50k, definitely north of forty. Ditto the Kia Stinger. In both cases, admittedly, I’d be comparing AWD versions, as a RWD isn’t even remotely feasible.
And once you get into the north of fifty territory, I’d be hard pressed to bet either over an A4, simply based on interior and size, and in the case of the Alfa, because the Audi isn’t associated with FCA. But I do think I’d love to test drive the Alfa, as it seems to be a very sweet driver.
I was thinking a lightly used 2017 (Giulia, not stinger, obv). They are out there in the low 30s.
The Fit is a subcompact so it’s not surprising it cost less than the Golf. The Golf would be comparable to the Civic. But I can see where the comparison comes from since they’re both more traditional hatchbacks versus the Civic being a liftback.
Does the WRX/STi not sell well elsewhere? Where I live they hold their value stupidly well and they fly off the lot here never lasting more than a week or two before being sold. I was pretty close to getting one before I got my FR-S but it was sold while I was checking it out and didn’t like the treatment I was getting at that dealership.
Not sure on the overall numbers, but compared to Outbacks, Crosstreks, and the rest of the normal stuff, the numbers are not large I don’t think. GTIs fly off the lot here, but the overall numbers are tiny.
Yeah, used would be a good deal, assuming it was still in one piece. I understand the Alfas are a lot better these days, but I still have memories of 1970s era Spiders.
About 30,000 WRXs and about 20,000 GTIs are sold in the US every year.
One reason they do not fly off the lot is because the dealers are pretty stupid. Last May a local dealer still had a 2016 GTI Autobahn edition on the lot. That was a car sitting on the lot for a year and a half at that point. I test drove it and liked it. According to KBB the retail (dealer) price of that model was about $27,500k. I wanted to get it for $25k but would have gone as high as $28k. The dealer’s best offer was $30k. Their excuse was that it was “rare and worth a premium”. I replied that if it was worth a premium it would not have been on the lot for 19 months and that if it were on the lot when the 18s came out they would not be able to get rid of it as new.
It was still on the lot when the 2018s came out. Wankers.
Something similar happened with my WRX many years ago. It had sat on the lot for a while, was just about school bus yellow and was a special edition. It had sat on the lot so long that you could see part of it had actually faded. New model year was coming out in just a few weeks too. In this case the dealer took a lower (not lowball) offer and away I drove, happy with my new toy. One upside of the ugly color was that it was not hard to find in a car park.
Oh, yes, the stealerships are idiots often enough. Or, rather, the business is such that outrageous greed is successful enough times that they act that way all the time I guess.
It’s especially dumb with WRXs and GTIs. These are not particularly low-volume cars, not like the R or Type R or whatever. They aren’t particularly expensive, nor are they particularly high-status. The enthusiast crowd that likes them is generally quite willing to go used or wait, or go somewhere else. So it amazes me when they do this kind of crap.
Yeah, the GTI is kind of only seen as cool by enthusiasts… Cause it’s kind of a derpy looking hatchback. It doesn’t look cool or sporty. It looks like a Golf.
Strange goings on at the top:
Apparently Mueller is on his way out and Diess (head of the VW brand) is in.
These top-level corporate shakeups are always so bizarre, to average folks. Average worker bees get canned, end of story. The big wigs get to negotiate their departure, retain their dignity, and get huge payoffs, even if their actions cost the company several orders of magnitude more money than anything the average worker could do.
Bah:
I do wonder how they came up with this solution so fast, and why they didn’t put that effort in years ago. Also, how does it work, exactly? This bit doesn’t really say much:
Yeah, the gibberish in that statement made me think “we’ve figured out a way to make your diesel engine run on gasoline, so we don’t have to worry about it any more.”
Well i eventually bought a newer car. Its a 3 year old Ford Focus Powershift titanium X edition. Its not quick but it drives real nice, has about every gizmo and gadget going, low mileage 1 owner. Massive improvement on my 15 year old banger
Not Porsche’s first recall, but this one is larger.
Porsche, Volkswagen AG’s (VOW.XE) sports-car maker, has been asked to recall around 60,000 Macan and Cayenne diesel-engine sports-utility vehicles due to a defeat device that could result in higher nitrogen-oxide emissions, Germany’s federal motor-vehicle authority KBA said Friday.
“The manufacturer was instructed to remove the prohibited defeat devices from the vehicles concerned once the measures have been approved by KBA,” it said.
Defeat devices are control components that improperly manipulate tailpipe emissions.
The compulsory recall concerns Porsche Cayenne and Macan models with Euro-6 diesel engines, KBA said.
Yeah, the rot runs deep throughout the whole VAG company it seems. Which sucks, because their cars are great in every other respect. It’s like they weren’t satisfied with just being world-class, they had to be super greedy…
I ended up buying a Honda Civic hatchback.