It’s certainly a beautiful and tastefully modified example of the kind most enthusiasts would dream of.
As a former serial GTI modder in a previous life I would firmly be in the ‘return to standard’ camp though.
Just this evening I was returning home and as I passed by the drive-thru takeaway part of the city I caught sight of a modified mk6 of some description closely followed by a mk7 R with a crackle and pop exhaust plus a heap of other visual mods. Nice cars I’m sure and somebody’s pride and joy, but not done to the taste of everyone.
Trouble is cars like that would be viewed in a certain way when being sold on. Suspicion would be that they’d been ragged, raced and used as a mobile social club around housing estate race tracks.
Unfortunately to conservative second hand VW buyers any modified car, no matter how tastefully done and how well maintained, will be viewed in the same light as flame spitting, Maxton finned, low riding city bypass drag racers.
People like to kid themselves that a nice straight totally unmodified example up for sale has been owned by someone that wiped the car down with the softest silk every time so much as a molecule of dust landed on it and never ever exceeded a speed limit by more than 1mph.
Or more specifically they would trust a totally standard car far more than an example that had some modifications, as the latter just throws up doubt as to how the car has been looked after.
Having been there myself many times, the process of researching mods and going to great lengths to find the best people to fit them, or even spending countless hours doing it myself to the best standard I could achieve, is viewed as a pleasurable experience.
However when the time approaches to move the car on to pastures new that enthusiasm of fitting mods changes into a feeling of it becoming a hassle and chore to remove the add ons again and return the car to stock. Modifying a car seems like fun, de-modifying it is sometimes a nuisance.
It would be far less hassle to sell the car as is and take the financial hit of the mods but unfortunately it limits the market massively. The mods people admired on the car suddenly become viewed with suspicion.
The best course of action is to dig in and strip the car back to factory standard in my well trodden experience.
The standard car suddenly becomes more attractive to buyers (as opposed to casual viewers) and the parts will always find a waiting enthusiast market.
That’s just how it goes.