MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: seckles on September 09, 2012, 10:48:37 am
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Well after almost 4 years of very happy ownership I have now sold my Ed30 to eltel on here. It has been a fantastic car and I hope tel has many more happy miles with it
So now the question is what to replace her with? My initial plan was to buy an cheap < £1000 run around (e.g. MK3 GTI) for maybe a year or so until ED35s are more reasonably priced or even a MK7 GTI. However, I have just seen in my local car supermarket an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Cloverleaf, which I really really liked. I mean, really liked! :drool: It's 2 years old and up for 15K. It has ALL the toys my ED30 had, inc. xenons, sat nav, reversing sensors, heated leather seats 18" wheels, bluetooth cruise control and has 235bhp. Only problem is that it's done 37K miles - 5K more than my ED30 when I sold it, but I do do pretty low mileage.
So i can't decide what to do now! Biggest problem I'm worried about is depreciation of the Alfa and the car being worth nothing when I come to sell it :(
Has anyone any experience with these cars or any thoughts on them? (I do realise that you all are gonna be biased towards a Golf tho!) What should I do? Ultimately I know I want a MK7 GTI but they are getting silly money now and I know it'll be a good couple of years before I can afford one probably. What do you think?
Cheers
Steve
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Why is 37k a worry ?
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Hi steve
Really nice to meet you friday, you did look gutted when i drove away and i cant blame you
Long long journey back to essex arrived 01.30 but i was smiling all the way home :driver: :driver:, you have been
a credit to the car , i love it.back to your decision (top gear always said your not a true petrolhead
until you have owned an alfa ) and they do make some very pretty cars, its got a fiat chassis and
it will drop like a bomb in value imho i would get the best mk6 you can find with low mileage run it for a year
then look at the prices for a ed35 ,all the people i know that have strayed away from golfs have in the end
regretted it unless they were going to something high end.if you still want a nice mk6 i will keep my eyes open
down here.
Did i leave that small vw badge behind??????
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37k in an Alfa is not the same a 37k in a Golf. Even nowadays. I'd hold fire and wait for the ED35 to drop, or even an R.
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Here is our development car that we used for our software for the 1.75 TB engine: NA systems is a waste of time, just turns the throttle into an on/off switch.
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This will make good reading for ya !
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So you guys not too impressed then eh? Thing is, I really loved the car and I'm thinking after 8 years of Golfs that it might make a nice change for a couple of years. It drove well & was quick enough (for me) and was surprisingly good inside the cabin IMHO. My main concern is depreciation and having less money in 2/3 years time to buy a MK7 GTI. Also doesn't help that my Mrs doesn't like Golfs at all!
Steve
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Can't deny they are pretty cars, but ownership proposition is another matter all together!!
Unless you are leasing/hiring it walk away or it will cost you a fortune!!!
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Ive driven a hire car that had only done a few k miles, and it felt like it was falling apart. Granted, they look pretty, but im not sure you will get the same enjoyment out of it as the Ed30. I honestly dont know why you didnt just hold on to the Ed30 until the Ed35 prices were more reasonable?
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So it's people like you who buy alfas, citroen etc for no good reason at all when there's much better cars out there.
Wouldn't touch with a barge pole depreciation will kill and reliability is wank.
Alfas love to use cheap plastic parts
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So you guys not too impressed then eh? Thing is, I really loved the car and I'm thinking after 8 years of Golfs that it might make a nice change for a couple of years. It drove well & was quick enough (for me) and was surprisingly good inside the cabin IMHO. My main concern is depreciation and having less money in 2/3 years time to buy a MK7 GTI. Also doesn't help that my Mrs doesn't like Golfs at all!
Steve
I'm going to wade in here as somebody who moved from an Alfa Mito to a Golf GTi.
I loved my Alfa; I never spent a penny on it, and having spent £4k on my GTi already, I still don't love the Golf anything like as much and part of me yearns to be back in it.
It was a better looking car, was more interesting to sit in, mine was perfectly reliable (and you still have a year's warranty left if yours isn't, so you can make sure anything is sorted), whereas my Golf has been unreliable and full of rattles.
The steering wasn't great, but then the Golf's is also fairly dull.
At the end of the day, they're special. The reviews suggest they are 90% of the car the Golf is, but can't quite match it. The feeling you will get will more than make up for it; wanting to get in it in the morning, look back at it when it's parked.
But then we've had 2 Alfas in our family, and both were utterly reliable (although my Mito was low mileage).
We've had around 15 VAG products and only one has been as reliable, and that was a Mk4 1.6...
I don't know much about depreciation, so that bit is up to you, but I'd recommend an Alfa wholeheartedly. This is only my experience, though; there will still be a slightly higher probability of it not being perfectly reliable, but here's hoping it is fine!
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So it's people like you who buy alfas, citroen etc for no good reason at all when there's much better cars out there.
Wouldn't touch with a barge pole depreciation will kill and reliability is wank.
Alfas love to use cheap plastic parts
Is that Audi in your display picture yours?
Because Audi are bettered in literally every sector they have a car in; the only one up for debate is the R8.
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Any of the GTI's (includes Ed30) are a very difficult act to follow if you want the same functional practicality and performance.
I've never owned an Alfa but they have so much style! :notworthy:
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We took our mates Alfa 147/9 to Belgium Spa GP weekend and came home on the back off a tow truck!
(https://www.mk5golfgti.co.uk/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdaz.co%2Fmedia%2Fv108%2Fax_vts_dom%2F268E8E7A-071F-4D06-95FD-2E1F1B5869F0-660-000000D1FC5EA754.jpg&hash=c0ea75851294734899fea0ac357ea923afeafc43)
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Well i am in the same predicament ! The only difference is that i haven't sold my ED30 yet . MPG for me is not an issue as i only do about 3k or less a year in the car. If i knew what to buy next i could have sold it several times over its only done 19666 miles ( I cleaned it again this morning !)
The ED30 in 5 door is such an all round car and able to carry 5 people and drive like a sports car. Its got all the toys i want on it and to get something i like as much , like a 2010 S4 Avant , 2007 RS4 Avant or similar will cost heaps of cash . I have thought about an out and out sports car but the practcality of it and the times i would actually use the performance are limited . I like nice stuff but also Cars depreciated quickly and i hate that . The newest i would ver go for is 2 years old due to that. My mate has a Porsche 911 convertible and he hardly uses it , he wants to sell it but just loves it too much !
Something will jump out at me one day and i will have to have it . As soon as i lose that passion about the Ed30 too but i cannot see that happening soon .
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Any of the GTI's (includes Ed30) are a very difficult act to follow if you want the same functional practicality and performance.
I've never owned an Alfa but they have so much style! :notworthy:
Having read you S4 review i am sure , like me , you would change for the S4 ??
I also keep doing a search on pistonheads for people looking for an ED30 as p/ex....M3's and Audi's and recently a 3 door S3 . Now what if an S4/RS4 Avant came up ! I would be in a predicament !
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Any of the GTI's (includes Ed30) are a very difficult act to follow if you want the same functional practicality and performance.
Having read your S4 review i am sure , like me , you would change for the S4 ??
....Actually, much as I enjoyed driving that S4 Avant it may surprise you that I absolutely would not buy one nor swop my 103k mile Mk5 GTI for one. I don't much like saloon cars and the Avant is far too big for my needs.
An RS3 or Golf R are the only cars that I would possibly consider but in fact I wouldn't. I just had my OEM bushes changed to SuperPro polyurethane, recently had UNIbraces fitted, there's no way I want to change - I'm still enjoying my car far too much. I know I would feel exactly the same if my GTI was an Ed30.
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Any of the GTI's (includes Ed30) are a very difficult act to follow if you want the same functional practicality and performance.
Having read your S4 review i am sure , like me , you would change for the S4 ??
....Actually, much as I enjoyed driving that S4 Avant it may surprise you that I absolutely would not buy one nor swop my 103k mile Mk5 GTI for one. I don't much like saloon cars and the Avant is far too big for my needs.
An RS3 or Golf R are the only cars that I would possibly consider but in fact I wouldn't. I just had my OEM bushes changed to SuperPro polyurethane, recently had UNIbraces fitted, there's no way I want to change - I'm still enjoying my car far too much. I know I would feel exactly the same if my GTI was an Ed30.
Very similar taste myself, ideally an RS3 but would be hard to justify that amount of money sitting my driveway, the Golf R is on my shopping list when it gets down below 17K :happy2:
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Thanks for your comments guys. Still totally undiced on what to do tho!
Thanks Uz for your comments - it's nice to hear positive comments esp. from someone with first hand experience! Obvious question tho, is why did you get rid of your Mito and get a Golf?
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Family member was getting rid of the GTI, and value was around the same as 3-year-old Mito; thought it would be a nice daily drive for 3 years, while I save up for an Alfa 4C, and I could slowly turn the Golf into a track car with some lightweight wheels, power and suspension mods.
As a daily driver, GTI is easier to drive due to the torque (I only had the 95bhp Mito), but the Mito worked its way into my soul. It is a cliché, but I finally realised why everybody says it... I even tried to buy the Alfa back, but they managed to sell it on almost immediately...
I will admit I was lucky, though, because mine was reliable. You would definitely be taking more of a chance with one, but in my experience it was worth it, and if I could go back 3 months, I would have kept the Alfa. I won't fall in love with a GTI in the same way, even though I thought I would; it's too sterile...
I will be running back to Alfa as soon as there is a car which is a suitable upgrade and I have the money to do so...
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i owned an alfa romeo brera for a year and sold it for a GTI, it constantly had engine lights coming on for no reason and the turbo kept cutting out... it also chewed up tyres like 3 sets in the one year and i didnt even drive it fast and considering it was a 2.0 tdi it got worse mpg than my golf. i absolutely loved the car i just couldnt cope with how often it was in the garage not to mention it lost 3 grand in value in one year :O as much as i loved it it had to go, got my gti and havent looked back! ill be getting an audi for my next car :)
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Thanks for your comments guys. Still totally undiced on what to do tho!
Thanks Uz for your comments - it's nice to hear positive comments esp. from someone with first hand experience! Obvious question tho, is why did you get rid of your Mito and get a Golf?
Also, on a half-related note: not a single person has said "That Golf's nice, much better than the Alfa". Around 20 people have said said they much preferred the Alfa. Even at VW, I parked up and had employees swarming it when I went to pick up my brother's car.
I'm not saying this should make your decision, but it shows there's something so exciting about the cars.
Aweful_truth, that's terribly unfortunate. The Brera was supposed to be extremely reliable. It used to be very, very high up the German equivalent of JD Power; poor MPG doesn't surprise me because they are so heavy, but then my Ed30 only achieves 24mpg. I was speaking to someone and he was telling me he does 22 in his S500...
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No ones denying that alfas are better looking, but reliability and depreciation is traditionally poor on them, and they aren't the fastest of cars.
Mercedes, Audi, BMW are all of a muchness, it's the safe bet, and generally not much between them, people just choose which ever looks better to them.
I was talking to a mobile mechanic the other day day and he was moaning about the unreliability of the French and Italian cars which he blamed on the amount of plastic cheap plastic components they use.
I also find it odd that you say every VAG you have owned over the last 15 years have been unreliable for you. You must have had really bad luck.
In my family if I recall the last 20 years of VAG ownership we have never had a unreliable VAG car. Granted my last car a mk2 Leon Cupra developed a gearbox leak, but that car got a kicking everytime it was driven, and was the only fault over the course of ownership, so wouldn't call it unreliable. Unreliable to me is a car that keeps developing faults or is consistently breaking down.
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No ones denying that alfas are better looking, but reliability and depreciation is traditionally poor on them, and they aren't the fastest of cars.
Mercedes, Audi, BMW are all of a muchness, it's the safe bet, and generally not much between them, people just choose which ever looks better to them.
I was talking to a mobile mechanic the other day day and he was moaning about the unreliability of the French and Italian cars which he blamed on the amount of plastic cheap plastic components they use.
I also find it odd that you say every VAG you have owned over the last 15 years have been unreliable for you. You must have had really bad luck.
In my family if I recall the last 20 years of VAG ownership we have never had a unreliable VAG car. Granted my last car a mk2 Leon Cupra developed a gearbox leak, but that car got a kicking everytime it was driven, and was the only fault over the course of ownership, so wouldn't call it unreliable. Unreliable to me is a car that keeps developing faults or is consistently breaking down.
Agree that one could barely call a gearbox leak a fault, considering it's such a quick and easy fix in most cases...
I would not put Audi in the same category as BMW or Mercedes, especially if we are not putting VW in there (which I certainly won't be). Mercedes and BMW are much more reliable cars (and generally better, too).
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Massive generalisation from you there.
We have all 3 makes in our family.
Currently a Audi TTRS, c-class and 330d. All of them 2010 plates. All of them have been reliable, the merc has had a new electronics control unit though (not to be confused with a ecu) and that's it.
Test drove a4's, 3 series's and the c-class and tbh they are all of a muchness. Chose the BMW and merc purely on the basis that we have had alot of VAG's over the years compared to bmw's and mercs. The Audi interiors are still nicest, although the merc drive is the most comfortable
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Massive generalisation from you there.
We have all 3 makes in our family.
Currently a Audi TTRS, c-class and 330d. All of them 2010 plates. All of them have been reliable, the merc has had a new electronics control unit though (not to be confused with a ecu) and that's it.
Test drove a4's, 3 series's and the c-class and tbh they are all of a muchness. Chose the BMW and merc purely on the basis that we have had alot of VAG's over the years compared to bmw's and mercs. The Audi interiors are still nicest, although the merc drive is the most comfortable
We are historically a Merc family, moving to Audi in the past 5 years, and it has been decided that we will be moving away for our next cars. This is not in my household, but we are a close family, uncles etc. inclusive.
Currently 4x Audi, 1x Merc. Plenty of VAG if everybody is included, and only Mk4 platform cars have been good to us.
The A4s are horrid to drive, so you made an excellent choice there. Two of my uncles own them.
The TTS is nice but unspectacular; not the best car to drive, even though PH were saying it was the best TT. Niggly problems like rattles, misfires, engine cut-out at 4k revs.
I like driving the Q7, though; the unreliability is the big problem there. Gearbox is shocking, but that has been fixed in the facelift, and the car (as Audi techs have agreed) was clearly rushed to market. The running gear was not suitable for a car which weighs 2.25t unladen in its lightest form. Suspension failure was common, tyre wear is ridiculous, engine is under huge stress, gearbox struggles, brakes wearing quickly.
Like I said, we used to buy Mercs only, and they have never let us down. We switch to Audi, and they have only been disappointing.
EDIT: Just realised I've veered massively off-topic. Apologies Seckles.
I'll summarise with this: Buy whatever excites you, because every car company has problems and you can't depend on anybody as much as you think you can. If you like the Alfa and want to take the plunge (and can afford the projected depreciation), then take it. I didn't regret it and I hope you don't either.
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I'll summarise with this: Buy whatever excites you, because every car company has problems and you can't depend on anybody as much as you think you can.
....I couldn't agree more! Life is for living and isn't a rehearsal. Or at least I think it's a safe bet that there ain't no cars to excite you in the afterlife (if that's what you believe exists).
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Misfires and engine cut outs. My Cupra had the same engine, never had those faults, the ed30 guys don't seem to have those faults either.
And I have a TTRS not a tts.
As for the a4's they are nice cars, like I said all of a muchness, if they were so bad as you claim they wouldn't have won numerous awards and people wouldn't be buying them
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Misfires and engine cut outs. My Cupra had the same engine, never had those faults, the ed30 guys don't seem to have those faults either.
And I have a TTRS not a tts.
As for the a4's they are nice cars, like I said all of a muchness, if they were so bad as you claim they wouldn't have won numerous awards and people wouldn't be buying them
You're wrong on the first point; I'm an ED30 driver, and had the same problems (and my brother's first GTI had misfires). In my research, I found out a LOT of people had the same problems. In fact, one American forum had a rather long thread chastising the quality of the 2.0TFSI compared to the old 1.8T unit.
My brother has a TTS, so I'm not sure what you mentioning your RS is for? Either way, Pistonheads (and others) have said that ths S is slightly more fun, but it still isn't a barrel of laughs, if I'm honest. It's good, and grippy, but unexciting.
People buy them because they are better looking than the competition (or were, until the facelifted C and new 3); the current generation A4 is not pleasant to drive. Audis are in vogue, though.
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Ok if you say so.
Enjoy your alfas :signLOL:
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Misfires and engine cut outs. My Cupra had the same engine, never had those faults, the ed30 guys don't seem to have those faults either.
And I have a TTRS not a tts.
As for the a4's they are nice cars, like I said all of a muchness, if they were so bad as you claim they wouldn't have won numerous awards and people wouldn't be buying them
You're wrong on the first point; I'm an ED30 driver, and had the same problems (and my brother's first GTI had misfires). In my research, I found out a LOT of people had the same problems. In fact, one American forum had a rather long thread chastising the quality of the 2.0TFSI compared to the old 1.8T unit.
Did nobody mention the coilpack recall?
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Misfires and engine cut outs. My Cupra had the same engine, never had those faults, the ed30 guys don't seem to have those faults either.
And I have a TTRS not a tts.
As for the a4's they are nice cars, like I said all of a muchness, if they were so bad as you claim they wouldn't have won numerous awards and people wouldn't be buying them
You're wrong on the first point; I'm an ED30 driver, and had the same problems (and my brother's first GTI had misfires). In my research, I found out a LOT of people had the same problems. In fact, one American forum had a rather long thread chastising the quality of the 2.0TFSI compared to the old 1.8T unit.
Did nobody mention the coilpack recall?
I was told my coil packs were not up for recall on the system (so my uncle may have had them done under his stewardship).
Either way, I had them all replaced. And the spark plugs.