Second impressions – my commute to work this morning.
As I decided to leave the car alone whilst driving it and not get distracted by all the settings and menu’s I have barely delved into, I got more of a feel about how it was driving.
The car is much quieter than the Scirocco when maintaining speed or accelerating very gently. I think this is down to it being far better acoustically shielded from the outside.
The sound actuator sounds a little different to that on my Scirocco when in Sport and accelerating. The Scirocco sound more hummy/burbly (almost like the low hum Iron man’s repulsors have when powered up (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve watched the film). The GTD sounds a bit more growly/gravelly.
At tick-over and through the low revs, the GTD is noticeably more refined than the 170TDI unit on my Scirocco, and that’s not just the extra sound insulation – it sounds that way on the outside too.
Like my Scirocco was from new, the GTD engine feels very tight. I’m convinced my Scirocco was on some kind of power limitation program when new. It barely felt more powerful than the 140 Scirocco I had before it, and then as soon as 500km/311 miles had passed, it was as if a switch had been flicked and it was much more powerful.
The GTD feels a little less tight (matching my Scirocco’s current feel), but it still seems as though there is some early retardation of output going on. Haven’t really tested it much – had a few brief spells of moderate acceleration using just over ½ throttle.
The engine seems to be warming up a lot quicker than my Scirocco – 3 miles (5 on the Scirocco) and the water temp was settled at 90C (I didn’t plug through the MFD to check how quickly oil temp got up).
Economy was 48.5mpg indicated for my commute vs somewhere around 49-50mpg on my Scirocco (which is obviously well run in). My Scirocco was running on the sidelights on my commute yesterday – the Xenons were on the whole journey in the GTD (maybe that accounts for 1 or 1 mpg). I would say that a GTD straight out of the box is going to match a 170TDI Scirocco or MK6 GTD in like for like journey conditions and will hopefully outdo it by 10% when it is run in (expecting an indicated 55mpg for my commute when it has a few thousand miles on it).
The sporty ambience of dark headlining is great – much better than the standard light grey/beige of most VWs (including my Scirocco). Don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want it.
There was a bit of neck craning from fellow commuters while going to work – lots of people happy to overtake people to then sit behind it and look at it for a while rather than overtake immediately (including a few Audi A4 and BMW 3 drivers that would normally be cutting you up left, right and centre).
The dancing of the Xenon beams when you power up is a new one for me, never had Xenons before as I was always too tight to pay £1100 for them.
And I found my 32Gb SDHC card bought especially for the car this morning, in a very safe place! I’m sure the other one I ordered because I couldn’t find it will be dropping through the postbox today!
The stop-start feature which I thought would be annoying isn’t bad at all. I am a habitual clutch dipper when sitting at the lights, I only take my foot off the clutch when I have a long wait on my hands, so the stop-start will only be working when I really want it to, if I keep up my clutch dipping habits.
Visibility is massively better than on my Scirocco through the side and rear windows.
Been in work 2 hours and I can still barely smell the “new car” scent on my clothes – nice!
