Well, DSG.
I called into the local garage on the way home, and found Andrew killing time before he closed up. Had a good chat. Main reason for going in was to check that he thought it was OK not to do the now-due service on the Peugeot if the car is going into the scrappage scheme in 3 months, and he said fine, it's not got any life-threatening problems and it's MOTed till March, so basically just keep driving it.
The only negative thing he had to say about the Golf was that it's expensive. Yeah, right, I can add up. It's a bit telling that plenty of people are prepared to buy the thing at the price they're asking, and I think I might just join those ranks. When I mentioned the non-responsive Ford dealer he just laughed and said never to darken their door again, go to the one in Peebles. And he said I'd get more gimmicks on the Focus but the Golf had class. I wasn't really asking him what he thought about that though, that's my decision.
He said he didn't have anything in particular against the DSG gearbox. He said it was definitely the way forward, certainly for automatic transmission, and that he thought basically the engineers had nailed it. He apparently has a friend who drives for a racing team, and all their cars for racing have DSG. I said what did he think about the reliability of the things and he remarked that any gearbox can fail, as I knew very well (nodding to the Peugeot, which as we both know has a gearbox on the way out).
Well, doesn't really say whether the DSGs are more likely to fail early than the manuals (118,000 miles before failing and the manual 6-speed doesn't owe me anything), and obviously a repair to such a complex system would be pricier. But at least he didn't make the sign against the Evil Eye and tell me not to touch it with a barge pole.
I think I like the sound of all this. I'm reconsidering the leather option in the light of all the comments, and the cost, and seeing that the cloth probably looks good with the Blue Graphite. And I'm not convinced I need the storage pack (any opinions on that?). Speccing the car on the VW web site like that comes to £26,445. Which would be just shy of £24,000 (let's say £23,995, it sounds better) with the deal that Western VW were offering me for the Peugeot as scrappage.
Doesn't sound too bad when you put it like that....
I think I'll ask Verve to quote me on that spec, and see if I can get a DealDrivers figure for that too. And take it from there. DealDrivers isn't a stupid idea if they're reputable, as they seem to be, as even if they give me a dealer down south, I can take a day off, drive the Peugeot there and drive the Golf back. I'm just worried about whether I'd get service from Western or Verve here if it then turned out that the new car had a rattle or something subjective like that.
I need to move reasonably fast, as I heard on the radio just as I was pulling up in Andrew's car park that the smart money is on the scrappage deal being discontinued in October. I presume that cars already ordered with the scrappage deal won't have that pulled if they're still being built when the announcement comes, but I don't think it's good to hang about.
Getting close here guys....
Rolfe.
