Almost said goodbye to VW yesterday.....almost

[P6GTD]

Fred, that ST mystery is bizarre. You are, as usual, correct.
And yet there are new ones being offered on Autotrader right now.
When they were launched in early 2020 I sat in one at the local Ford dealer and they had 3 more in stock.
I look at one in the flesh every few days.
And before engine says ST Line.....no, these are the genuine full fat article.
The Ford dealer even admired my lovely GTI and wondered if I would like to swop.
I declined.
But I still like the look of the Focus and the dynamics are I believe brilliant.
Maybe no thirstier than an R??
Not sure I would risk the depreciation an ST though but it’s a worthy alternative.
Has anyone on here tried one out?

[fredgroves]

I did find it in the end - Ford's configurator is just plain confusing.

I could select 280ps and auto - the auto box is brand new, like this month brand new.

I've got some carwow requests out for it, but at the moment the discounts are pretty meagre IMHO - £35k spec coming down by 2k... (i just edited these figures after checking it again - worse than it was previously!)

At least its not north of 40k though!

I've no idea how one of these will drive though - Car Magazine wrote that the automatic version was going to be slower 0-60 than the manual, which if true is a very curious state of affairs in 2020.

[king monkey]

With the new ST what’s happened to Ford’s affordable performance tag? £34k. Wow.

I had finance figures on the previous ST before I ended up with the S3 and I was amazed how much it was. Think the Audi worked on cheaper per month.

[fredgroves]

I think the days of affordable German brands on cheap PCP deals are long gone.

Which is what we've been saying a lot on here lately.

I've not seen a PCP figure on a Focus yet and its hard to say just how it will look yet - its all about Input price minus GFV.

German cars with heavy discounts and good residuals were the sweet spot, but I think those are gone - as seen with the TCR (or the BMW)... ~35k with a 16k residual means paying 19 grand plus interest. As opposed to 28k with a 14k residual on the Mk7 GTI. Thats 5k plus interest difference - 136-150 quid a month extra for 36 months. It soon adds up.

[monkeyhanger]

Car Magazine wrote that the automatic version was going to be slower 0-60 than the manual, which if true is a very curious state of affairs in 2020.

Maybe they're going s bit more realistic for normal use?

The way DSG routinely feathers in the gears really isn't that quick, it's disappointing. Outside of using launch control whereby feathering-in is minimised, i'd say it's no faster than a manual box, and may be a smidge slower.

The DSG isn't quick in changing gears, it is quick in changing clutches on gears already set up.

[fredgroves]

Most 0-60 stated figures are faster for the auto variant vs the manual though.

Also these days the auto is more fuel effecient.

No surprise that Ford can't get this right though.

[P6GTD]

Going back to an alternative to the Golf  I must admit after some thought that it would be an Octavia vRS or a Leon Cupra. I’m not really drawn to Audi, BMW or MB.

[monkeyhanger]

Most 0-60 stated figures are faster for the auto variant vs the manual though.

Also these days the auto is more fuel effecient.

No surprise that Ford can't get this right though.

Ford have always been pro manual though (I wish VAG were), it's the one thing they've been historically good at - slick shifting manual boxes, and like I said, aside from a 0-62 sprint in launch control (I bet you'd be at least 0.5s slower without launch control), DSG really isn't quicker than manual, and certainly not when it needs to drop a few cogs on the move e.g.6>3, 7>4, I.e. Real life driving, not traffic light Grand Prix

I always found my manuals 10% more economical than my Dad's DSG with the GTD and got way better mpg with my R than most were reporting with their DSGs. Add in the 7th cog with the switch from the DQ250 box probably made them just about even, despite what the official figures would have you believe.

[monkeyhanger]

I’m a dinosaur but here goes.....

The opportunity to do the sums based on buying a car for cash (or via an old fashioned bank car loan)
and what it might be worth “second hand” disappeared some time before I entered the world of modern car ownership ....... having spent most of my working life with the good old fashioned company fleet car.

Now, with heavily discounted new cars, promotions, PCP, contract hire and the world of GFVs we seem to be
in an environment where value comparisons are extremely difficult to make.

Also, what on earth was VW doing in the early days of the Mk7 R in selling the brand so short with ridiculous deals? Idiots!

When the Mk7 GTI was introduced I presented myself at Cameron’s of Perth eager to buy a new Mk7 to replace my Mk6 only to be told by a smug Sales Manager that any orders would be placed at full list price only, discounts being out of the question. This is my 5th consecutive Golf and I have not bought any from my local dealer.

My point? There is none really other than I’m feeling grumpy tonight and felt like a rant about the motor trade.

As we've seen recently, with ridiculous RRPs, GFV makes or breaks a deal as much as a decent discount, and VWs are dropping.

Strong GFVs and affordable depreciation were the reasons I've bought so many from new.

If they start to depreciate like Fords, I'll do what I would if I were buying a Ford...buy it 18 months old for half RRP.

The R had a great GFV initially, and it seemed to be worthy of it - I got rid of my 46 month old R for £17300, the initial GFVs were around £18500 at 36 months. If VW wanted to stop those dirt cheap deals, they could've choked supply to fleet channels and made them go through retail with no meaningful volume discounts - VW decided it was fine with piking them high and selling them cheap as BMW has done for the last 10 years.

It did irk me that I had an 8.5 month wait for mine and people were getting red and white cars with Cadiz wheels lease cars on a 3 month lead time - VW clearly don't give a sh!te about retail customers.

[Exonian]

Sootchucker, there are a raft of ex-BMW fleet and demo 135i’s sat on dealer forecourts for circa £31k with most of the spec you want as I’m sure you’re very aware. Many of them £40k give or take list price originally and between 6 and 10 months old.
25% lost in that short time at retail so nearly 30% at trade price should anyone want to part exchange a similar car for something different.
At the stupidly high APR % I’d never recommend buying a used one on a PCP but as a cash purchase they look really good value against poverty spec 19 plate S3’s advertised at Audi dealers or ex-lease A35’s in Merc dealers.
25% in less than 12 months is either shocking depreciation or merely reflective of the market for nearly new cars.
Having run a few trade price quotes I can safely say it’s the latter with the proviso that Mercedes and Audi seem to hold their value better by a small margin.
The relevance in this is that unless you plan on keeping the car 4 years where depreciation will have levelled out somewhat these cars lose a LOT of real money in years 1 and 2 compared to buying say a Golf R a few years ago when the VW had the monopoly on that segment of the market (yeah, you could buy an S3 back then but hardly anyone did).

My point here, aside from stating the obvious, is you would need to be very sure you were buying a car you actually liked quite a lot as it’ll cost a hell of a lot of money to bin it off if you were to suddenly decide a mk8 Golf wasn’t so bad after all in a year’s time.
You need to be not just buying it for the fripperies of gadgets which you’ll hardly use (aside from HUD which can be real world useful) but instead buying it because it’s your sort of car to drive and own.
It’s quite an ugly car to most people but they seem popular with ex-Golf owners it seems. It’s quite a masculine design I think and there’s something about them that appeals to VW owners unlike the A35 quite so much.
The A35 is a well proportioned blob with a designer badge on its nose and seems to appeal to women going by the amount I’ve seen.
I think the designer handbag look of the A/S3 will also be a huge hit with female buyers as it’s quite elegant and the badge is a fashionable one.
Golfs seem to be more gender neutral so maybe the laddish looks of the 135 appeal to Golf owning blokes who feel massively disillusioned with the mk8?

The strengths of the 135 are its power delivery for day fo day use (unless you’re a ring road test pilot who likes to wind the revs right to the max) with lots of low end grunt, its refinement (going from the limited drive I had in one last year) and the fact it has an LSD as well as 4wd.
In short it’s a bit like a 4wd GTI with a nice dashboard and seats.

Is it a keeper though?

Once in a while one needs to remove the blasé familiarity with the mk7 Golf and actually walk around it, stand and admire its lines and build quality, then poke around it like you would if you’d never owned one before.
It’s still a staggeringly good package compared to much newer designs including VW’s in house effort which I’m sure is designed to push us into early adoption of ID models as soon as possible. I think it’ll initially backfire for a decent number of potential repeat buyers who will eventually drift back once the electric vehicles become more appealing to non middle class liberals with a healthy company car allowance.
I still think a late model 7.5 Golf is the best package out there for a blend of talents, style and equipment.
If any car should be a keeper it ought to be a mk7(.5) Golf.



As for me, with a massively heavy heart as I’m hugely fond of the vehicle and have personal incredibly sentimental memories that are directly as a result of my mk7 ownership, it looks like my time is about to draw to a close.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must write and tell you... “ as a historic character might scribe with his/her quill.