Moving on.
 

Traded the FR-S for a 2018 GTI.

Some pics of the old and the new.

So far only mods are tires, wheels and an intake (also tinted and ceramic coated)

Next will be a tune to about 300hp 350tq and coilovers. Mayyyybe an exhaust.

Nice ride. What made you want to switch?

Nice GTI, always liked those but got a Speed3 instead. Golf is more refined and comfy.


Enjoy.

I also just moved on, I’m gonna miss the FRS, but I’m now the owner of a 2005 Honda S2000. I love the car, but it’s only been 3 days. Congrats on the GTI! :-)


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The FR-S was paid off, so I wanted to trade it in while it still had decent value. I strongly considered the 2018 BRZ TS, but ultimately I wanted something more practical. My wife has a 2016 Focus ST which I love, but didn't want to get the same car, so I started looking into the GTI (always liked them) Test drove it and fell in love. the build quality is superb. Some stock GTIs are doing sub 14s in the 1/4 (Driver dependent). Also dyno-ing at 230whp when VW rates them at 220bhp.

Congrats on the GTI! it's the jack of all trades of affordable sports car.

Your FRS looked so cool. Congrats on the new ride! I strongly considered trading in my 86 for a GTI last year but didn’t like the test drive as much as I thought I would. Great car, just not for me right now.


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Congrats. Had a passenger ride in a GTI once and loved the handling, speed and the tartan seat pattern. Would have considered it instead of the 86, but having already owned a hatchback (Cooper S), I wanted a RWD car. Enjoy it!

you'll miss the FRS. I guarantee it. Going back and forth from an S7, power and comfort are great, but the visceral feeling of having a car that does away with creature comforts is something else.

I don't think I'll ever give up on my FR-S unless it dies or i die, whichever comes first.

The MK7.5 GTI's are very very good, especially if you got the Autobahn.

I was previously a MKV GTI owner and I do miss the swiss-army knife nature of the GTI from time to time.

I miss mine every time someone needs to use the backseat.
Its lack of rattles was also nice.
I don't miss having to change the HPFP cam follower once a year...

I'm sorry for your loss.




But in all seriousness, congrats on the new ride! I see a lot of hate on those things, but I've always thought they are beautiful.

Ah yes, joys of FSI ownership. Inspect cam follower every 3 oil changes lol.

Congrats on the new ride. Hope you will stick around the forum!

What kind of exhaust were you looking at? My buddy has a 2016 Golf R and I always tell him he should get an exhaust for it, but he's happy with the stock exhaust.

Funny, I sold my 2016 GTI for my FRS.
The level of refinement is so much nicer on the GTI, I miss it occasionally, but not as much as the three TDI's I had before it.

haven't thought that far ahead yet.

I had a 2009 GTI that I traded for the BRZ and haven't looked back. I had been a VW guy since 1985. I lived with the little issues like O2 sensors throwing a CEL. But my MKV had intake manifold issues and later clutch problems. That was the end for me. It's one car I would consider getting a platinum 100k extended warranty. But when one is older, time is too precious to be spent fixing broken shit on cars.

They are great freeway cruisers but it was easy to find suspension limits in spirited suburban driving in the GTI. Something I have yet to do in my BRZ.

Kind of chuckled at this just because the GTI is very similar on paper to the FoST.

FWD hot hatch, mid 200hp range, turbocharged, etc etc

My wife had a '13 ST for about 4yrs before getting rid of it. GTI has always been a contender to me because it's just such a good balance of everything you could want from a daily driver.

How does the math on that work? It seems like continuing to drive the car and get use out of it without a payment for another couple of years would carry a higher value than the trade-in value applied against a new car.

I know if I keep mine for two years from the time it was paid off and put the payment amount in the bank each month instead, I'll have $13,400 in the bank and a car that's still worth at least $7K, if not more. I don't even have to do the present value calculation to see that I'd come out ahead by waiting. I believe I can reasonably assume this car will be reliable that long.

I'm not criticizing your decision to buy a new car, just the rationalization of it.

I've known plenty of people who cannot live without a car payment.

OP, sounds like you found a car You like. Congrats. Hope it serves you well.

I'm recently out of college and already know a ton of people who've gone from loan to loan on cars just keep some kind of car payment. It's more of a value proposition for the owner and what they want in a car for a certain amount of time. Alot of people don't look in the practical sense you suggested @extrashaky of not making a payment and putting it into a bank. I'm not entirely sure which is better but it works for people I guess:iono:

Some people will stay in unending debt for that new car smell.

I didn't realize people bought that many "new car smell" air fresheners. :laughabove:

Whoops

I have nothing against debt. Debt is an extremely useful tool when used responsibly.

I was just amused by the rationalization and wondered if there were really some math I was missing to help that line of reasoning make any sense. I suspect the real reason he bought the car is "Fuck you, I wanted it," which is a much better justification than some silliness about trade-in value intended to paint it as a financially savvy decision.

What I'm saying is, you don't need excuses. Fuck you I wanted it is as good a reason as any.

I've had my prior car for almost 20 years now(passed down to my son 4 years ago when he turned 16). When I bought this car that was my reasoning. I agree, it's as good a reason as any.

Nice looking car... good on ya .. .:thumbsup:


humfrz

Love my 17 GTI couldn't part with the BRZ though. Congrats on your 18 looks sharp!

At first, for a second, I thought you said traded for an STI.....
but it is a GTI....

I still have my Mk IV GTI. It's always been a great car. But it's the most unreliable car I've ever owned. Everything that could break on it has broken at least once. Granted it has over 265,000 miles on it. I bought the FR-S as a back-up car but since I got it I hardly ever drive the VW anymore. I actually stripped the seats out (not the drivers seat) and use it as my "sports" car. I can carry my windsurfing stuff, surf board and an inflatable SUP along with a can of air to inflate it.

Sound thinking,but the real question is how are you paying just under $560/month on your car?! Those payments are pretty insane considering the car that you are paying that much money for. Some would say it all relative to each individual and their financial situation,but that's a lot for this particular car,when you think about it. With insurance,I'm assuming that you are well over $600/month and more than likely closer to $700! You must have put down practically nothing for a down payment and have some pretty bad credit.

No it isn't. Get your head out of the monthly payment. That's not the cost of the car. Your out the door price really has very little to do with how much you pay each month if you finance.

At the time I bought my BRZ, I wasn't sure how these cars were going to hold their value, so I wanted a short loan term so that I wouldn't ever be upside down on it in case disaster struck and I needed to sell it. I put $5K down and bought a 48 month loan on the rest at a credit union at a price of 1.49%. I paid about $800 in interest over the life of the loan, which really isn't very much. I had budgeted up to $1000 per month for a new car, so my monthly payment was quite comfortable as far as my monthly cash flow went.

It's really the loan term that has the biggest impact on monthly payment, with interest rate coming second. For example, if I had bought a 36 month loan instead, I would have still had a 1.49% rate, and my payment would have jumped up to $739. But I would have saved about $200 in interest with $602 total interest on the loan. A higher monthly payment would have actually been less expensive.

If I had wanted a lower payment, I would have had to buy a loan with a longer term. With a 60 month loan, my interest rate would have jumped up to 2% (because a longer loan term is a bigger risk for the lender). Then my payment would have dropped to $456, but the total interest would have jumped to $1343. The lower payment would have been more expensive.

My credit union didn't offer a 72 month loan, because there's too much risk to the lender in a loan term that long to be able to offer a reasonable rate. If I had found one elsewhere, my rate would likely have been at least 4%. At 4%, the monthly payment would have been $407 with a ridiculous $3,288 in interest. And I would run a high risk of being upside down on the car throughout a significant portion of the loan term, unable to sell it without taking a big loss and having to come up with additional cash out of pocket to pay off the loan so that the sale could even take place. It's likely that if you're being forced to sell, you don't have that cash available in the first place.

I'd be paying the same principal no matter what. But the option with the lowest monthly payment would have added almost $2500 to the cost of the car compared to what I paid and would have been much riskier to me personally. It's all that extra interest that would be "a lot for this particular car," not the monthly payment on the 48 month loan.

I picked up a new VW GTI too. It replaced my ageing MazdaSpeed-3. It's a practical sports car.
My FRS isn't going anywhere because I hate being practical.

What ever happened to paying cash for a car, especially a sporty type car?

:iono:


humfrz

That's why I bought a 4 year old one [emoji4]

That's certainly acceptable.

But that's not always possible, practical or even desirable. Suppose you have $5,000, your old car is dead, you need reliable transportation for your job and you want a sports car. You can't wait four years until you can pay cash for it because you need to be able to get to work, so you're limited to $5K. A $5000 car is already going to have some miles on it and isn't necessarily going to be reliable in the long term, especially if you expect to put a lot of miles on it yourself. And it's surely not going to be the reliable sports car you want at that cost.

Maybe you could spend your $5K on a beater now with the idea of saving for the new car later, but that just puts the new car further into the future since you've already spent $5K of your new car money you'll have to save again. You'll also spend more of your new car money on the inevitable repairs out of warranty your $5K bargain is going to need. And throughout it all you'll be worried that your old car may break down and leave you stranded with no way to work again.

Or, you can pay a lender less than $1000 spread comfortably over the next four years to solve the entire problem now and also have a warranty to cover unexpected mechanical failure. That's $1000 to cover everything you need and get you want you want as well.

Seems like a bargain to me.

Or consider another scenario. You have $40K in the bank. You could go write a check for a new BRZ.

But right now you're paying $1500 per month to rent an apartment, whereas if you bought a house with more space nearby your monthly payment would drop to $1000, and you'd be building equity, and you'd see a much bigger tax return each year because of the mortgage interest tax deduction. But to buy the house you need to put $30K down.

Do you buy the car and forget the house? Do you buy the house and forget the car? Or do you buy the house, put $5K down on the car, have both and still have $5K cash still in the bank as an emergency fund?

Or just think about an emergency fund by itself. Suppose you have $40K in the bank. You can get out the door with a BRZ for $30K and have $10K in emergency money. I can tell you from experience that if you lose your job unexpectedly, $10K disappears quickly. So what if instead you put $5K down and paid that lender $1000 interest over the next four years to finance the car so that you would have $35K in cash on hand just in case? Suppose you lose your job. You'll be a lot more likely to make it through the dry spell if you have $35K in the bank instead of $10K.

All these options come with varying degrees of risk. But paying cash up front is not without its own risks in certain circumstances. When you pay out cash, you run all the risks of no longer having that cash.

Or consider my own situation. I have a job that requires me to drive a large number of miles each year, and I get mileage reimbursement for using my own car. When I bought the car, I was getting more in mileage reimbursement than my payment and maintenance costs each month. In that situation, why use my own money when I had a steady source of funds from my company instead?

As I said above, there's absolutely nothing wrong with debt as long as it's used responsibly. In fact, there's really nothing wrong with it when used irresponsibly as long as you accept responsibility if it goes wrong and don't try to blame your mistakes on evil banks or Republicans.

^ well now @extrashaky , that was well written ..:thumbsup:


humfrz

I was gonna say cause used cars aren't 200 bux anymore...:iono:

Hey, you sayen I ain't in touch with reality anymore .. :mad0259:


humfrz