Sorry Volks .... but if you consider spending a mere £34k and wasn't/don't know how the setting that makes the whole concept and branding relevant is no big deal then your expectations are somewhat ldifferent than mine - please, no offence intended ... this kind of lack of knowledge and worth is what drove me away from Audi and the RS badge and the BMW M badge - just a bunch of "Top Man" salesman showing absolutely no understanding, knowledge and/or appreciation for the badge/brand that pays their wages! The local VW Manager apologised to me about 3 months ago because of the lack of professionalism shown and understood my point and said that VW are not used to enthusiasts and the culture that they want/desire - he actually worked for Porsche for 10 years so understood my frustrations ... the CS-S is arguably the most iconic sports car VW have ever produced for the open market, so you would naturally think they would make an effort and pull all the stops out to get the whole package right and make the whole CS-S buying process feel as special as possible as they have managed to grab some clientele from competitive brands ... I know if I was the manager of a dealership and I had some CS-S cars coming through I would be liasing with VW uk and VW Germany to get every bit of plausible information I could get my hands on and feed that back to the client and make the whole process special and memorable for all the right reasons. One of my clients collected ferraris and was invited to maranello before the launch of a new car and was given a brief of the car and its characteristics and was naturally expected to place a deposit. Ok, we don't expect that level of detail from VW but this opportunity to highlight the brand and put it into the shop window of sports car enthusiasts has been lost and almost every single CS - S owner feels frustrated in some shape or form .... this is a tragedy as the engineers have done a great job developing what looks like a great car but the brand and network have not done their side of the bargain ... Let's hope and prey the car drives better than the purchase experience!
Previously you said you can't compare the CS-S to a GT4 and yet you continue to compare VW with Porsche albeit this time with the dealer network and now you top that with a reference to Ferrari of all things.
The big difference between VW and Porsche (and Ferrari) is profit margins, the retailer make bugger all per car compared to that of Porsche and I am sure Ferrari. Therefore your sale really has little impact on the salesman's take home pay and the retailer's bottom line and therefore the time they can spend on a CSS handover is minimal.
Imagine all the bewildering options and functions of a new car, even a relatively basic car like a Golf that sales people have to be up to speed on, do you really think that the salesman will feel the need or have the time to get into the peculiarities of a car he will never see another of, especially when he's selling in most cases to people who know more than he will ever know? This isn't ideal or right but is human nature.
Couple that with the impact of dieselgate and I am not really surprised that there is no budget for pre or post handover surprise and delight communications like invitations to this and that or glossy brochures although it would of course have been nice. I was surprised however when I heard this car had actually survived the post dieselgate product cull and was going to make it to production and if that's at the expense of all the other bits and pieces you are expecting then so be it.
When the R32 was launched, buyers were invited to VW Racing Cup events including hospitality, I just get the feeling there is nobody there to organise this stuff any more and more to the point, no budget.
What we should be grateful for is the sterling work of the VW UK Press Office headed by Mike Orford (who GT4 will be intrigued to know used to be until quite recently the head of PR for....Porsche Cars GB). They have systematically raised the profile of the CSS even though it's solely being used as a halo car for the rest of the range as however much copy it produces, VW wont sell another but it's done a great job of increasing interest and quite clearly creating some sort of 'overs' market...for a bloody Golf!! Funnily enough almost exactly the same happened to the sold out Cayman GT4 just a year earlier...
However as a result of this buzz it's easy to think the Press Office's enthusiasm will filter right through to the handover process and that's where reality may not match expectations.
I've got previous form as I had one of the first customer Mk7 Golf Rs (also a special car for VW, well before they started to give them away) and that experience made me swear to never buy another new VW but I figured the CSS was so special that even if everything else didn't go too well, they could never undo the amazing work of the engineers who were headed by a man who used to work for......errr....PORSCHE!
