Photography by Tom Suddard
It’s no secret that the used car market is a mess right now, and we’ll admit that the past few years have affected our purchasing decisions just like they’ve affected everybody else’s. You may have noticed our retreat towards older cars, more-involved builds, and trailering to the track. What can we say, when the world doesn’t make sense, it’s tempting to shut the garage door and focus on our projects.
But not everyone has that luxury, including those who have to do it all with one car–maybe that car lives in an apartment parking lot, maybe they have a busy life without free time for a giant project, or maybe they just want the simplicity of driving the same car to work during the week and to the track during the weekend.
Is it still possible to have a fun, trackable daily driver without paying the average new car price of $48,000? We believe the answer is yes, because depreciation does still exist on dealer lots–you just have to know where to look.
So here’s our hypothesis: We believe the Mk. 7 Volkswagen Golf GTI presents an unsurpassed value as both a used car and a trackable street car, and we believe the rumors about reliability are overblown. With excellent driving manners, plenty of power, and a great aftermarket, there’s no reason not to daily drive one.
True or false? To test our hypothesis, we bought one: Say hello to our newest project car. $26,500 bought us this
Announcing our latest project car, a 2017 Volkswagen Golf GTI Sport with 19,000 miles and a DSG transmission. And like so many other buyers, we didn’t buy it from a traditional dealership: We bought it from Carvana. In future updates we’ll dive into the details of why we chose this car, what the buying process was like, and why we crossed so many others off our list.
What’s next? Track time, of course! We’ll be at our official test track, the Florida International Rally & Motorsport Park, with the car first thing Friday morning. Yes, we’re going to take our new car on track less than 48 hours after purchase. Wish us luck!
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