So then, I guess it’s time to bring this up-to-date again. As many of you would know by now, car 22 is another Volkswagen Golf, this time it’s a GT Sport TSI, the model year is 2009 although I took delivery on 1 October 2008.
After some discussion Hedy convinced me that Tornado Red was the colour for us … my preference was Candy White but she turned out to be right … although I am still not positive!
I actually ordered this car about 4 months before delivery, and its the first that I have had on a novated lease. At the time of ordering probably the biggest decision, other than the colour, was between the DSG “flappy paddle” gear box and the in-dash GPS. In the end the latter won out, in addition to the GPS it also provided a 30 Gb hard drive for MP3s and an interface to the bluetooth mobile phone kit.
All up price was around $39k on the road, with the lease discount etc of course.
Without a doubt the most endearing feature of this car is its motor … while its only 1.4 litres it finds a way to produce 125 killerwasps, or about 50% more power that our older 2 litre Golf. It does this through the use of both a supercharger and a turbocharger, along with some pretty fancy electronics to manage the whole shee-bang. Every person that has driven it has the same reaction … as they change into second and I say “don’t be afraid to hit the gas” the immediate comment is “holy shit!” Its peformance is nothing short of staggering, and it does this while getting around 8l/100kms around town and much less on the open road. I can quite comfortably set the cruise to 118 when I hit the freeway at Crafers and that tiny little 1.4 will hold it with comfort up and down those hills to Murray Bridge. Thank goodness for boost devices!
It is full of what I thought were going to be wanky features such auto-lights, auto-wipers, auto-locking etc. Of those, the others I can give or take, but never having to worry about whether the lights are on turns out to be really freakin’ useful.
Similarly, having about 15 hours of music permanently available via the satnav is also pretty useful, all I do every now and again is copy some new MP3s to an SD card and then copy it up to the car.
3 years in now and I have probably only identified one issue … it does tend to be pretty rough in the rear while at the same time it can scallop the rear tyres.
At this stage my plan is to extend the lease 1 year at least at the end of the initial 4 years … its that good I don’t think I could give it away just yet!
So, there you go, car 22 … and the last for a little … is a Volkswagen Golf GT Sport TSI.
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