Bye bye G T I...

[monkeyhanger]

I didn't think gfv was set by a dealer, it was set by vwfs...

I was surprised myself (as I'd never seen it done by VW dealers), but the Audi salesman definitely had movement threshold on the GFV. He upped GFV by £600 rather than discount by £600 to get close to DTD figure I had.

The initial and revised GFV used didn't match the one on the website for finance examples.

Dealers have absolutely no control over VW GFV's. It's set by VWFS centrally and built into the algorithms used for their forecasting. The finance tool they use can be altered manually (which he may have shown you), but that manual change gets put into grey and is for illustration purposes, it cannot be set. If a BM wants to change a GFV they have to go directly to VWFS, but I've never known of them agreeing to anything as it upsets the car's value later down the line especially as margins are very small these days. The dealer/BM normally just hides the money in the PX or discount given etc etc so it levels out to the agreed 'cost to change' amount overall.

The only way a GFV can be directly manipulated by a dealer is by them offering another product from another provider such as Black Horse finance where they work with that provider to tailor the finance accordingly. Blackhorse in essence give them stretch bands to work in for GFV's.

I can only tell you what happened with me. The Audi guy was able to manipulate the GFV upwards to the tune of £600 on an Audi solutions agreement rather than give me the £600 discount I wanted. It happened.

Never known VW do it or be able to do it, ever (7 new VWs PCPed).

I don't know how he did it, perhaps taking into account options on the order that weren't accounted for previously? There were £1700 of options on that car.

As Fred has said (and I was fully aware of - these GFVs are usually well on the cautious side so you always have "equity" (you'll only see that equity at another VW or Audi garage, they can get the most for your car on the used forecourt) to hook you into buying another.

I have p/xed 7 VWs on PCP into another and have never failed to get at least 115% of the GFV, so even upping the GFV in this case on a car that had an unmanipulated  3 year GFV of £8700, getting to £9300 is not going to make a loss for the dealership for Audi/VW FS.

I can only assume that there are discretionary allowances visible to the salesperson that are almost never exercised. I have no other explanation for what definitely did happen.

Are margins that small for used cars?

Whenever I've chopped a car in, it is up for 25% more than I got in p/x. If you chop in early enough, there's still at least a year's warranty they don't gave to pay for, they usually leave cosmetic damage alone (I once saw a used Viper Green Scirocco for sale at Pulmans that had aftermarket wheels that were scraped to hell and one was visibly buckled - they didn't rectify out of their own pocket to make it more saleable, but they'll have offered the bare minimum they could in p/x no doubt). Add to that, if you do buy on finance there's a juicy kickback with that hefty 10% APR. Plenty of money to be made on an approved used car.

[monkeyhanger]

Maximum Gloss level now 

I need to get mine properly polished up once I sort 2 bonnet stone chips. Nice.

[Jim_mk7.5]

It literally was Bye Bye GTI today as it was finally collected.

No damage so straight forward collection. Two wheels had small scrapes on which he was fine with and white worm was on 2 or 3 of the wheels, quite bad on one in particular.

The 'e' is looking better now with the OEM gloss black grill and some new plates on 

Before:



After:

[Jim_mk7.5]

Warning - Non-Golf chat!

So I'm 4 months into 'e' ownership and thought I'd do a little summary as I'm sure there are a few people who may be interested (or not...  ).

I've only done just over 2100 miles since it arrived in June, mainly due to working from home a lot and not many client meetings that aren't via video calls. But living with the 330e is very easy. 

What do I like? The quietness, which I wasn't expecting as I made the GTi even louder with the res delete but as most trips are mainly around Sheffield, its very relaxing to drive especially in traffic. Not having stop-start is amazing and you just creep along in traffic with no fuss or noise. The cabin is excellent and the iDrive is so easy to use and having the rotary dial as well as the touch screen means you can do everything you need on the move without losing concentration. As the weather has turned, the a mbient lighting is briiliant and gives the interior a real lift making it feel very high end for what is a fairly low-level BM. The cost - my monthly company car tax bill has dropped by at least £200 plus my fuel bill is much lower as well. Now we have moved house I can make use of charging overnight as for the first 2 month I was unable to charge it much. Even still, it's averaged 59.9 in the 2100 miles I've done, of which over 1200 have been on electric.

Wireless Carplay - this is decent but tends to crash the first time you ask it do something such as get Siri to make a call. Then it reconnects and is fine after that. You can plug in and there are no issues so need to get that looked at.

On street parking and some council carparks are free in Sheffield for low emmission cars which is a bonus!

It also shifts. I haven't had many opportunities to really stretch it legs but we were away in Norfolk last week and coming out of the some of the villages, the acceleration was very impressive. It would certainly give the GTI a run for its money in that situation when it's using the full 290bhp. Still managed 66mpg over the 450 miles we covered in the week. Corners - probably not keeping up with a GTI! It's planted and does handle reasonable well but you feel the extra weight. I need to check the pressures to see if I can drop them a bit a noticed it can skip over bumps.

What don't I like? Boot space isn't great and the opening/height nothing like the hatchback of the Golf. Guess a Touring would solve this but that wasn't availble. The boot space is robbed a little by the batteries as well but seats go down and we filled the car last week and got everything we needed for a week away for 3 of us.

It's not a car I've just jumped into a drive like I did on loads of occasions with both GTIs. I'm going to try and get out for a proper drive at some point but I do have the Ducati for fun and noise.

I genuinely think a pluggin hybrid is a great option for those not ready to go full EV but would be nice if it was a little more sport-focused and a hybrid M340i would be brilliant. You can waft around the city centre on full electric and then switch to Sport when required plus its got a decent range when fully charged and fuelled up.

Can't really undertsand why VW didn't make the GTE more appealing so would be keen to try a MK8 GTE at somepoint.

Makes me wonder what I'd get next... But I do still fancy a TCR at some point 

[ar899]

Thanks Jim - I was only having a look the other day to see if you had reviewed your beemer!

What is the ride quality like compared to your GTIs? What wheel size do you have? Runflats?

ta

[Jim_mk7.5]

Thanks Jim - I was only having a look the other day to see if you had reviewed your beemer!

What is the ride quality like compared to your GTIs? What wheel size do you have? Runflats?

ta

Mine is on the 18s, no run flats with no adaptive dampers (bog standard spec!). The M Sport doesn't get M suspension either so the ride is very good and not as harsh as the GTI but also sits a bit higher than a regular M Sport.

[Exonian]

Good to read the update and your current thoughts Jim.
It’s no TCR but it certainly sounds like it’s a nice daily.
Glad you’re enjoying the car
It’ll certainly be interesting to see what you go for once the lease is up on this one

I did write a biggish update on my own car but never got round to posting it! 

[Yusee]

It’s nice to read experiences of other cars. No car is all things to all men, if you find one that is “ most things to me ( most of the time)” then that’s a special car.

[steve12345]

Interesting comments about how the "e" corners.

I currently have a 420i Grand coupe as a courtesy car while my car is being repaired (someone drove into the back of it - luckily wasn't too much damage & no one hurt). This particular car lacks power over the GTI, it feels very sluggish but I also think it just doesn't feel as engaging to drive. Around the bends it doesn't feel as pointy and direct as the GTI, its not fun which surprised me as I was expecting rear wheel drive to handle better. Maybe I need to spend more time driving it in a more spirited way.

Otherwise its very comfortable and effortless, very cabin quite. The ride is kind of the same as the GTI I reckon, this one has run flats and m sport suspension so its crashy on bumps but being bigger its probably slightly better (plus non of the creeks that my GTI has). I guess I wouldn't be disappointed if I owned it, but deep down I would still miss the GTI!

[Jim_mk7.5]

It’s nice to read experiences of other cars. No car is all things to all men, if you find one that is “ most things to me ( most of the time)” then that’s a special car.

Agreed. I think the GTI is that sort of car. Suits so many different people for different reasons.

My decision was financially led as wanted to reduce my BIK tax bill. So it ticks a lot of boxes but isn't a car you want to jump in to go for a blast but it's a very enjoyable place to commute in. Plus as it's a 2-year lease so I get to change again in 2022!