The red wheels (basically just the existing Queenstown wheels with red substituted for the diamond cut) are absolutely awful imo. Straight into the bin they'd go!
Some of the other touches are dreadful too imo, such as the half-assed spoiler sticker and the red pedals. Even the steering wheel looks not to my taste, the nice brushed silver effect replaced by dark grey/black, very "R black edition" style and NOT GTI imo. Anyone notice in the pics that the usual LHD aluminium dead pedal is missing? Oh no! Some idiot decided that the pedals should be painted red, but forgot about the aluminium dead pedal. So they've left it out.
It really feels like they've let some 21 year old intern loose with the VW credit card on Temu.com. Shocking.
On the positive side, I like the seats (albeit the same seats as the standard car with different fabric). And I like that they've brought back tornado red, because I've never liked kings red (old man's burgundy wine does not work on a GTI). And that new green looks interesting.
It also seems likely that the arka exhaust will not be standard, which is a step backwards from the 45. So you're kinda forced to spec the performance pack, which has the bonus of dodging those awful clown-show wheels, but at a significant extra cost.
Overall, yes I'd love one. Of course. But honestly, it's a lazy enough effort and exactly what I expected. I didn't quite expect them to go so far into the Temu shopping trolley though.
A couple of more interesting things I've noticed:
- no GTI door badge. Clearly they decided this was a crap idea
- nowhere in the blurb does it mention "Clubsport". It's just GTI 50.
