Thanks chaps. My colleague actually said yesterday will the gti potentially be worth more when all the cheap R deals cone to an end and flood the market. Seems to be less gti's on the road too where I am.
Is your colleague a senior exec at British Car Auctions or just an internet expert who read something on Pistonheads?
Seriously though, I've seen people post up similar things on other forums and I'm not an expert on psychology but I think people see what they want to see which would explain many things in life.
At what point was there ever a flood? A lot of registrations compared to the mk6 for many reasons but I'd hardly call something with a 6 month wait time a flood of cars that'll all hit the auctions at the same time. Being as VW Finance underwrote most of the early lease deals I'd expect a good few of them to end up back in the dealer network where VW will stage manage their release and prices.
Plus it's the top of the range model so until the things become quite old and rare in general (15 - 20 years minimum) when there's going to be a few hundred quid difference in their value at best, even taking into account whether the previous owners had done their best to wreck them then I'd wager (and I'm not a gambling person) that it would be a very strange market if the R suddenly became less "valuable" than a GTI.
Cut me open and I'd have GTI stamped right down my middle like a stick of Blackpool rock, I've been driving the things for nearly 30 years, but even I'll bow to the fact that the R offers a lot more in driver terms than a GTI.
I'd wholeheartedly agree that you see more R's around than GTI's and I'd expect the figures VW publish will agree with that but for example the nearest dealer to me had the same number of GTI's and R's on their forecourt when I last passed by a few weeks ago. That's a pretty large dealership too.
I'm more interested to hear what a long term GTD driver thinks of the two of these compared to the GTD...
Your GTD is a manual though isn't it?
I think what you probably have found is the GTI is lighter at the front (lighter engine) and will bounce around more than you are used to, whereas the R will feel more planted by virtue of the extra 30kg(ish) over the back wheels.
Having jumped from GTI to GTD to GTI then to R and various permutations thereof using both my own cars and hired cars from a colleague I do have my own observations.
Firstly I don't think the GTD is much heavier than a GTI at the front like in the good ol' days when comparing similar models. Going from my GTI PP to another GTI and also from my PP to a GTD I didn't notice any weight difference in feel to the front suspension. Possibly the GTD felt fractionally softer in the spring and damper rates but that might have been my imagination or going from 19" to 18" wheels.
The main difference you notice at first is the power delivery and gearing. Plus how quickly the GTI seems to rev compared to the GTD thanks to the gearing and torque delivery.
Going from GTI to R you immediately feel the driveline to the rear and the different suspension between models.
Ironically the R seems to understeer slightly more (masked by the traction control system) than the PP GTI which, unusually for a VW, has virtually no understeer and is amazingly sharp on a gradual bend. All three versions tend to fall over a bit when you hit a very sudden sharp turn but that's more to do with the fact they're heavy cars and have reasonably complaint suspension. Aside from that I'd say body control on all three cars was first class.
I'd like to spend more time with a GTD DSG just to try and fathom the model out a bit but that was the car I expected the most of but was least keen on during my half hour stint with it. With my friend driving it in Sport mode it accelerated astonishingly quickly at sensible speeds and it would be as quick as any other (more powerful) model on a cross country blast, but it lacked a bit of the torque thump that I enjoy from driving manual Diesels. The gearbox masked the surge of torque too much for my liking by changing up and down too much, but on the flip side I find that when driving Diesels I tend to hold back from overtaking if space and time is a bit limited as I'm wary of running out of revs or being caught in the wrong gear if something unexpected happens. With the DSG you just let the gearbox ECU worry about that and plant the pedal.
