I hear ya Running Man. I owned a mk5 then moved to the Scirocco as I didn't like what they did with the Mk6 - massive Touareg rear lights and lumpy design. Not for me. But the mk7 is crisper but still a tad safe.
The thing is with VW they are soooo conservative with the Golfs evolution that the mk8 will just be a tweak of the current design. So, why not drive a mk7 now instead of waiting years and years. That's what I'm doing (when the bloody thing arrives).
For what it's worth I think it will be five years until we start seeing mk8 GTI's on the road.
Exactly my consideration on MK6 vs Scirocco, did not like the MK6 at all. I think it'll be considerably more than 4 years before MK8 is out. MK7 is a big leap, MK6 wasn't.
The biggest motivation for VW to release the MK6 was cost saving. The multilink rear suspension was to expensive and too complex to fit. They massively simplified it and saved hours on the construction times (Honda ditched it completely on the new Civic and knocked about £3k off R-type list price). As well as saving plenty in production costs/time, VW upped the Golf prices massively and placated with a nicer interior but pretty much no more toys (the Scirocco in comparison looked well loaded for similar money).
The MK7 is a proper new car with new tech that won't look old for a good while - I think we'll see 6 to 7 years out of it unless the competition comes on in leap and bounds in the meantime.
I'll probably end up keeping mine for 3 years (maybe 2 if something else takes my fancy in the meantime), although i'd probably keep the GTD longer if the alternative was buying another GTD because I don't want anything else.
