Skip this if you’re easily bored.
Funny this thread should crop up, a few weeks ago I thought by the time I’d dropped by here I’d be well on the way to M135i ownership too.
Jump back to around February and a kitten tripping avoidance manoeuvre in my kitchen resulted in a trapped nerve and massive back pain for months.
First it was constant but it’s gradually eased though still comes on suddenly and has manifested into a different type of back pain and also knee pain!
Basically I’m getting old.
There’s something in the settings of the TCR’s DCC that means I really struggle to drive it now. When the car hits a sudden change of surface there’s a kind of shockwave that hits me right in the lower spine and sends intense pain up my back and down my legs. Comfort, Normal, Sport, it happens in all settings.
After doing 1000 miles a month in the car right through the winter in complete comfort I was forced to furlough it in March despite having to work through “lockdown” myself. My other car is fine to drive despite still having fairly firm suspension and is driven with reasonable verve, aside from the clutch pedal hurting my geriatric knee some days. No back pain at all in that one aside from generally having a stiff back making me look like a 90 year old getting in and out.
The TCR, bought as a daily driver, has ended up like my Clubsport and R (previous cars) being relegated to very occasional use. The latter two mostly through choice though as I lived very near work back then where as now I have a 26 mile a day round trip.
Yes, I should probably see a doctor or chiropractor but there’s really no point.
Plenty of time spent on my own recently so I decided to do something about the car situation.
Some intense research, phone calls and emails, then some dealer visits.
The M135i was the car I *should* have bought last year really. I knew it then and I know it now.
For some reason I wanted to hold on to my VW roots so ended up with the TCR after being offered a pretty good deal. That will have evaporated into highish financial loss if I bin the TCR off now but what will be will be. I don’t have other expensive pastimes so will take it on the chin.
There were a few decent priced late 2019 M135i’s on forecourts with very low mileages (Ex-showroom cars and dealership staff lease cars) before the dealerships closed and these were snapped up quickly as soon as the staff arrived back on site.
The hunt for one of those in the spec I want proved fruitless.
There are some huge discounts on new factory cars but the usual six week BMW lead times are now much longer plus they’ve just hiked the list prices by a monkey pushing the spec I want into the luxury tax bracket, and I’m really not prepared to pay £500 a year road tax for something I’m not utterly in love with.
White paint, Plus Pack and Tech Pack1 should just see it under the £40k and they look good in white so I’d settle for that. It’d have to be a factory order though and the other downside would be everyone thinking I’m a copper.
With maximum allowed deposit paid, the monthlies are quite low on a two year PCP so that’s one option to avoid paying the silly high road tax too often. It’s a consideration.
Speaking to dealers far and wide there are certainly big discounts and decently priced forecourt stock considering how new to the market the car is, and from what I’ve seen there’s no lack of demand for the cars either, they seem to be being snapped up if they’re in the right spec.
They seem popular with former VW and Audi drivers it appears from talking to the sales guys.
That ties in with my impressions when I test drove one last year.
Despite looking very different to a Golf inside and out you can tell BMW used VW’s baby as their benchmark in the general feel of the car. In fact my overall impression was that it felt hewn from solid like an earlier generation of Golf rather than the lighter footed mk7. It felt more Golf than a Golf does these days.
Refusing to allow BMW to monopolise my field of vision I checked in to VW to scope out a very low mileage 2019 Golf R.
I’d previously lived with a Golf R for 18 months so know it doesn’t have the same jolt the TCR inflicts on me at times.
I really wasn’t keen to go back over old ground, but money talks and I have nothing but fond memories of my Golf R.
Oh, and the one I went to view was white too!
The dealership were very keen to take my TCR into stock as they’re struggling to find late low mileage desirable stock (similar to when there was severely restricted supply during the WLTP fiasco).
Alas they didn’t want it bad enough to offer me decent money and never followed me up.
In fact they hiked their own car up by £1400 overnight but would have sold it to me at the original ticket price. To be fair that dealership‘s sales side are an arrogant bunch and it would have pained me to buy a car from them.
At the end of the day I’ve trodden the mk7 boards for nigh on seven years now and the R felt a bit of a stale recipe after living with a TCR. I don’t mean that in a negative way, I’ve nothing but admiration for the R and if I still owned one now it wouldn’t hurt my back and so I’d happily keep it until the mk8 R shows up, so I could make an informed decision on where to go from there, be it keep the mk7 or search out an alternative that has actually moved the game on.
However, owning a TCR with those small but significant special bits of trim makes the rest of the range seem a little bland.
I did spend a bit of time looking over the mk8’s in the dealership.
There were a couple in a light grey like TCR grey and one in black.
I dislike black cars having owned several as they’re a massive pain to keep on top of and look shabby very quickly in daily use, but the Mk8 looks best in black unlike the mk7 which I think looks the worst in that colour/shade (sorry black lovers, just a personal opinion).
When they launch the GTI and R mk8’s there’ll be a lot of play on the amazing development put in at the Nurburgring making it the best Golf ever.
Well, if you have a racetrack local to you where you spend a lot of time then great.
Honestly, as a Golf owner for well over 30 years who has crawled over every inch of every series of Golf since the mk1 I can tell you there’s been a fair bit of penny pinching in the new design (that’s not actually all that new underneath).
Maybe with some decent styling and a power hike the R can actually redeem the design. I hope so, I really do.
Nipping across the road to Audi brought up a surprise wildcard.
The first car I noticed and wanted a quick look at was a new A3.
On the outside the new front end looks good but the very low nose like the Golf 8, Leon et al makes it look a little awkward so they’ve tried to disguise the feature by adding caricature sized bits of honeycomb grille sections to add presence. It kind of works.
Inside I was shocked at how the quality levels in certain areas have dropped from the outgoing model.
I couldn’t go inside the actual car but there has been massive cost cutting going on even when viewed just looking at it through the open door. It looked more A1 than A3, the centre console area especially.
Funnily enough the wildcard was the outgoing model S3.
It’s a car I’ve always overlooked and bluntly dismissed.
To me, from launch, the MQB S3 looked like an S-Line TDI with the abhorrent use of chrome around the windows being the final nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned.
However coming unexpectedly face to face with a 69 plate Black Edition S3 Sportback in Mythos(?) black I was stunned at what a pretty car it could be in the flesh.
No chrome!
And that interior with the super-sports seats is in a league of its own. Way more upmarket feeling than the plasticky new model’s.
This one had analogue dials but another plainer looking example in dark blue in the dealership had the digital dash (customer car so couldn’t get a proper close look) which looked more funky than the 7.5 Golf AID.
The downside of the S3 was thats it’s an old model now but was priced higher than similar age M135i’s and A35’s.
Yes, the A35 next.
Whizzing over to the Merc dealerships sees the A35 in short supply and holding their values surprisingly well.
Even company car basic lease spec ones on a 19 plate are quite highly priced and seem to be snapped up quickly. Bodykitted ones fly out of the door. They’re in big demand.
Again, the criminal use of chrome on a hot hatch ruins the basic cars looks, the less basic ones are sodding expensive and there don’t seem to be great deals on them.
The A35 is a pretty car both inside and out (by new generation standards) but there’s something not right about it I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s the fact it wears an AMG badge and yet is not any more powerful than a mk7 Golf R. Meh.
An intense but fruitless search.
There remains an unused TCR sat in my garage, and every time I lift the door it strikes me that it’s still a wonderfully cohesive design, styling wise, as a whole.
Ok, I hate the rear diffuser but aside from that...
Just this evening a Carbon Grey GTD passed me by then parked up. I see so many mk7’s around they’re almost invisible to me now but on this occasion it struck me what a good looking car the mk7 is compared to its contemporaries. A more simple design that’s actually a bit prettier than the 7.5 (the latter looking meaner and sportier in GTI/D trim) yet still looks modern and sharp.
The mk7 and 7.5 still holds up remarkably well after 8 or so years.
So, I too almost said goodbye to VW... almost.
