My thoughts:
7.5 GTI better looking, with better headlights, better interior upgrades and they sound quite good. The engine has loads of torque from just over tickover but is lower revving.
Ed40 has unique looks, unique interior with cloth but the leather gets ambient lighting which the cloth lacks.
The chassis feels slightly more agile, the engine less torquey but revs out well. Manual gearbox suits the car. The fluffy steering wheel is nice. The car feels special.
The Ed40 being at least 4 years old needs to have had a sympathetic previous owner.
The Ed40 also has swirl and scratch magnet gloss black everywhere so just think of the satisfaction of getting that all polished up…
Out of curiosity, if you were to be buying a used TCR now what kind of spec would you be looking for? Or would you take a Mk8 CS instead?
It would be getting PPF'd straight away after correcting the gloss black
It's actually had 2 owners assuming 1 business and 1 actual owner since it's on 23k miles with full VW history and the leather looks hardly sat in.
TCR wise - Sunroof, performance pack for Reifnitz and ACC, leather or cloth, dynaudio, 3 door in white, grey or red and importantly the Akrapovic.
A members brother on here purchased one a few weeks ago in black which had great spec actually but feel black doesn't do the TCR justice as it would lose the black details
But no, no real interest in the mk8's at all the interior is the off putting thing.
Btw M8, there’s a few white Edition 40 in Up for sale close to you and a TCR in Belfast, get those test drives done ! If you are feeling flush there’s even an Edition 45 👌
They're actually not great spec examples and the TCR has budget tyres on it which instantly puts me off for such a young car, considering my car has seen more goodyears and michelins on it just for fun
The Ed45 is nice but also is more much expensive than the M2 Competitions I was looking at.