Collecting my second Clubsport S 4 years after selling the first

[CookieMonsterGTi]

Nice!

Would love those seats in my TCR.

Interesting you chose the CS over a TCR considering the balance of “normal” driving you will probably do. I guess the CS is really that good at the non normal driving aspects!

You can buy the TCR seat material, would be great to get a pair of Recaros trimmed in it with the same alcantara bolsters. Something I would consider if I wasn't so 'careful'

Such a shame that wasn’t even a factory option let alone standard.

[o`Neil]

In Dec 2016 I bought a brand new Clubsport S (number 154), ran it for 2 years and 6k miles and sold it to scratch my R8 itch.  To cut a long story short I bought my second on Thursday (number 242) which was pretty much identical to my old one, even the first 4 digits of the number plate were the same.

How can you make the same mistake twice?

You know should should`ve bought a Golf R!

[Paul70]

Great project car Andrew. Look forward to your future videos. Are you planning a dyno run - I think a few of us would like to see what these make as standard? Great choice for the brake upgrade. I believe the stage 3 kit (355 disc) weighs less than the stage 2 kit!

I know you have a relationship with RacingLine but i would not recommend their turbo elbow as the transition to the turbo inlet flange is far from smooth (perhaps the design has changed) compared to the products from Forge, Revo or TT. The R600 is a great piece of kit, as you know.

[volkswizard]

Will you be going back to selling cars again?

I honestly don't know. For years now I've been saying I wouldn't have been able to start up if the motor trade was like this back in 2002.  The biggest realisation is that car dealers are no longer the shrewd business people I thought they were, because when stock is hard to come by, they will pay ridiculous prices to buy cars, not to make profit, but to fill forecourts and give their salaried staff some work to do.

[volkswizard]

Just watched the video. IMHO the mk7 / mk7.5 was the best looking Golf and makes the mk8 look like its ugly sister (I’ve never warmed to the looks of the mk8); just my opinion though .

@volkswizard - your ‘new’ Clubsport S looks great. One change I’d make; it looks as if a harsh (acid based?) cleaning product has been used on the wheels at some point during the car’s life as the plastic cover over the locking wheel bolt has discoloured to light grey. Only a few pence to buy replacements so worthwhile doing IMHO.

Agree with all of that.  I've just paid a chunk more for a 6 year old Mk7 that I did for a brand new Mk8 which says it all. When I got the Mk8, it wasn't perfect but it was a new GTI with decent spec for £32k and it worked brilliantly on road and on track and to PCP it was peanuts. Today RRP has gone up, discounts have gone down and APR has doubled so I can't recommend one, especially as VW still haven't sorted the glitches (which are a far bigger issue than the button free cabin).

With regards to the locking wheel bolt caps, isn't it weird it's only the locking cap that has discoloured? I've got a box of spare caps but these ones are for bigger locking wheel bolts than the ones I had in my box (some have got tiny clips inside them to bite onto the bolt head, these need a total empty cap). So instead I just used a soft wire brush on my Dremel to clean the white bit off the 4 caps.  Will get a full set of new ones I think because as you say they are cheap, just got to make sure I get the right cap for the lockers.

[volkswizard]

Did anyone else read that in his voice or just me. 

Sorry, I am like a stuck record 

[volkswizard]

Ok, the second thing actually, those pig awful wind deflectors were the first 

Anyhow, welcome back to the fold Andrew and congrats on the new purchase. We’ll all look forward to the car’s progress, warts and all. A good choice of project car for the channel and a very nice thing to own for your own pleasure.

I’m assuming the change from perfectly good (understatement) PS4S to Goodyears is a sponsorship thing?
Personally I’d much rather keep the Michelins on as they make the car look more original, even though they’re not strictly original if that makes sense.

Here’s looking forward to the next instalment…

Wind deflectors are gone already, they were on the car in some 2019 pics when it had done 6k miles. I know they are marmite, recently watched a video of a Mk4 R32 driving through 'that' ford way too fast and killing his engine, guess what, wind deflectors!

I'm not sponsored by anyone. When I had my first CSS, because of originality and how the Cup 2s contributed to all the reviews, I was reluctant to take them off and in the 4 years since I sold it I realised they had hampered my enjoyment of it - obvious really -  as they are track tyres and I drove it solely on the road.

So originality in the tyres isn't really something I am bothered about. When I got my GTI TCR, the owner had ditched the Cup 2s and fitted Goodyear Asymmetric 5s on 18s and I was commuting 50 fast miles per day in all weathers and I grew to have a lot of respect for them.  Then a year later my brand new Mk8 Clubsport arrived on 18" F1 Supersports as that tyre had now been homologated for the GTI (making it more "original" on a GTI than a 4S). Ran them for a month/1000 miles before swapping to Asymmetric 5s, then all season tyres and back onto Supersports before it was sold and I realised they contributed a lot to the car's dynamic superiority over Mk7/7.5 as it drove way better on them than the highly rated Asymmetric 5s.

Why ditch perfectly good 4S though? I needed some high performance road tyres for my (now sold) Leon Cupra as I only had semi-slicks for it. So rather than fit new brand ones to that, it inherited the PS4S and my CSS got the Supersports which is my preferred tyre from personal experience.

I wouldn't be blindly led by reviews, my decision is based on experience, but Supersports beat PS4S in this recent evo review which used a Mk8 Clubsport for testing;
https://www.evo.co.uk/tyre-reviews/18309/best-car-tyres-evo-performance-tyre-test

[volkswizard]

Nice!

Would love those seats in my TCR.

Interesting you chose the CS over a TCR considering the balance of “normal” driving you will probably do. I guess the CS is really that good at the non normal driving aspects!

It's a shame VW didn't give TCR optional buckets considering what the R bit stands for.

The TCR was a brilliant daily that was also OK on track (with a change to semi-slicks). The CSS is flawed in many ways but it offers the ultimate Golf high and that's what I want, primarily because when I owned my first one I didn't sample that high often enough. Part of the issue was that it came out on Sundays mainly as that was my only day off so I nearly always had a passenger on board and sampling the CSS's magic really isn't possible with a squeamish passenger on board. 

[volkswizard]

You bought a car from Hippo?

Yes indeed, I had no issues with the car or the buying experience and most of my communication was as a normal punter. 

[volkswizard]

I think the choice of a CSS over a TCR was a sensible one. One of them is likely to depreciate a lot less (if at all), be a lot more fun and generate much more youtube interest.

Buying cars for YouTube interest is a tricky one, in the six years I've been making videos, lots of channels have had lots of views and earned a lot of money by doing videos on Mk7 Golf R and now Mk8. It would be disingenuous of me to start championing this car because simply I prefer a GTI and this sincerity has definitely cost me views and slowed down the growth of my channel.
Now YouTube is my only source of income (simply revenue from the ads I have no control over, not sponsorship etc - rarely more than 3 figures per month)  I've had to consider whether sincerity pays the bills, it's certainly not high on the priority for a lot of people in this business. 

The Clubsport S came about because I was thinking what to do with my Leon Cupra 280. Modifying it would mean a commitment to keeping it and recent surprisingly popular reviews on my wife's TT had made me realise it wasn't actually that popular on the channel.  So man maths at its finest meant I could justify a CSS and stay true to my widely expressed GTI preference.  Rather than repeat videos from six years ago when I still had my first one, this car will get used properly as life is too short and nobody really uses them so it should be decent content but still unlikely to get anything like the numbers of a much cheaper R as it's still very much a niche car, which is fine as I've never really aspired to be mainstream, just need some decent solid viewing numbers and no more.