Thinking about selling the GTI

M

meGrimlock

New member
I have been thinking about selling my car for a little while now. My wife has told me that as long as my car payment doesn't go up, she is cool with me getting another car. I have been seriously considering a 2000-ish Audi A6 2.7T with the six speed. I still haven't sold myself completely on the idea, but after seeing some nicely done A6s on the 'net my interested is piqued to say the least. The main reason the A6 interests me is the fact that is is big, is relatively quick (and can be more so with a chip and exhaust), and a the 2000s go for around $18,000-$20,000. The size is nice because my wife has family in Mississippi, and sitting in my GTI or her Jetta for more than 4 hours has me feeling a little claustrophobic (sp?). We also have a 60lb Beagle mix that is also a little cramped when riding in the back seats of our cars, and it would be nice to actually take her on vacation with us. I do think they are pretty good looking cars, it is just too bad that I would have to get a 4.2 or a RS6 to get the flared fenders.



I have done some research on AudiWorld and I see that the turbos can be problems along with the starter as both of those items require lifting the engine to r&r. If I can swing a certified used car, that won't worry me as much. If worse comes to worse, the ECS Tuning RS4 K04 upgrade is about $2100 which is close to what I would pay Audi for new turbos anyway.



Anywho, anybody have any arguments for or against my decision? I am open to both.
 
My 2002 GTI 1.8t wasn't my dream car but it was the best bang for the buck I could afford at the time. It's a fun car, I really enjoy it (pssst pssst <--turbo :D ). It's a big car for cargo but small for hauling people, my wife has a Subaru Forester for that, it's very roomy for a small SUV.



I see your other car is also a 1.8t, so I can see how you might want something different and bigger. If you can afford the hit for getting rid of a 1 year old new car (sell for ~15k?) and it's what you really want then go for it.



I love the color for the GTI that you picked. They didn't offer it in 2002, but I like my reflex silver after having a black car previously. :angry





Adam
 
Thanks for the reply. What I can get for my GTI will directly affect whether I get the car or not. If I can't get my payoff, then I'll keep the GTI and refinance. It is not that I don't like the car, I am just interested in moving into something a little larger. Heck, I'd like to have both, but I can't have my cake and eat it too.



I actually had a 2002 GTI that was Indigo Blue, but it met an early demise when I pulled out in front of a Ford F250. I really do like the Silverstone Grey. When polished and waxed, it looks excellent and it does a great job of hiding swirls like your Reflex does. I was actually kind of scared of getting that color when I went to the dealer to pick it up because it seemed so lifeless and "flat". A little work with some 3M machine polish cured that, and I absolutely love the color now. I'll have to upload some recent pics some time.



Anyway, back on topic. Dealers around my area are asking $20,000 for a year old car exactly like mine (ridiculous, I paid less off of the lot new), so hopefully if I sell privately I can get in the nieghborhood of $16,000 which is very close to my payoff. If I do get the A6, I will probably end up trying to get the loan for a little more than the car so I can swing wheels and suspension as the stock offerings leave a lot to be desired. Seeing as the cars I have found are going for quite a bit under retail, that shouldn't be too hard to manage. That, and my credit is much better now that I have been out of college for a year and a half and have been able to pay my credit cards off.
 
IndigoGTI- If "ECS Tuning" is EuroCar Service in Norton, OH, I know them. It's a family operation and they are good people. They've tuned a number of A6s, including one that was set up pretty radically. They've done a *LOT* of VW/Audi work for me over the years and I DO recommend them.



BUT..be careful with A6 cars! I myself have had two A6s (all road, and A6 4.2). My father had two A6 4.2s. Of these, half were ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE due to drive-by-wire issues (like hesistation on acceleration) that made the cars, at least for me and my wife, unsafe to drive. The WORST of the bunch was the 2.7 turbo in the all road- just awful, you never knew if/when it would start moving when taking off. I've driven quite a few other A6s and most of them had the same issues to varying degrees. Note that my dealer took back BOTH of my A6s over this problem (with full credit for the purchase price, tax, license and everything, even after thousands of miles), as they recognized that it was bad enough to be dangerous.



I WILL say that my father's A6 4.2s were both better than mine, and his first one was a real "ringer"- great throttle response and noticeably quicker than the others. The second one still hesitates too much for me to enjoy driving it (and enough to scare passengers when I do- "will we make it through the intersection before the truck hits us?"). *I* just won't buy another A6 over this drive-by-wire characteristic- I briefly considered an RS6 after the S8's "deer incident", but decided I'd rather have a repaired S8 than ANY A6.



Other frequent A6 issues we encountered included airbag warning lights, inability to remove the ignition key, spurious check-engine lights, weird alignment issues.



Hey, how about checking out used A8s? Man I love those cars, and Accumulatorette says she plans to keep hers indefinitely. Incredible for travelling, quick and responsive, very comfortable. Whole 'nother world compared to the A6, IMO.
 
I like the A8s, I would love to have one but I really enjoy driving a car with a manual transmission. I talked with my wife over the weekend, and I think I will keep the GTI and refinance. We have a lot of bills right now, and we don't need to get a car that has the potential to be very expensive maintainence and repair-wise. My wife and I really like the B5 Audi A4 cars, so I may look at a 2.8 Quattro with a five speed, those cars are much less expensive and lowering my car payment would be nice. I can't make up my mind right now, I actually need to drive both cars and see if I even like them. :o
 
IndigoGTI- Keeping your GTI probably IS the smart thing to do :xyxthumbs But it's fun to think about what you'd like to replace it with, huh? ;)



When you DO go looking, yeah, you really need to drive them. Our A4 had VERY touchy brakes. Enough so that you had to mentally prepare yourself for the difference between it and other cars.



BTW, Accumulatorette always INSISTED that she'd NEVER like a car with an automatic. And she was VERY good with a manual- did the heel-and-toe bit, always double-clutched her downshifts properly, etc. (her synchros and clutch were always fine after 90K or more miles). Then she got the A8 and, uhm, heh heh, changed her mind.
 
Accumulator said:
IndigoGTI- Keeping your GTI probably IS the smart thing to do :xyxthumbs But it's fun to think about what you'd like to replace it with, huh? ;)
Click to expand...



Exactly, usually that is as far as it goes. Of course, if things were my way, I'd probably be changing cars every six months.



About the manual, that is probably the one thing I won't compromise on. Color, leather/cloth, sunroof, etc. come second to the car having a manual transmission. I guess I just like the extra amount of control it affords. I won't even consider a Tiptronic, all that I have driven have still tried to control the car even when left in the pseudo-manual mode. I don't like the fact that you can't hold the car at higher RPMs without the computer deciding it is time to upshift.
 
IndigoGTI- I hear you about how the Tiptronic is far from perfect! The S8's seems better than most (I CAN hold it right below redline) but still, it's no manual. Come to think of it, my Audi dealer reprogrammed it shortly after I bought it- as I recall, they set it up to operate in high-performance mode all the time. They wanted to keep me happy after my awful A6 experiences and they knew we were used to manuals.



Heh heh, sometime while you're daydreaming, keep an eye out for the older (maybe around 1991 or so) Audi V8 with a 5-speed. They are a LOT quicker than the automatic versions, and those cars just last forever. I've driven NICE-driving ones with well over 150K miles, they just NEVER die. One I drove had over 200K miles, and you sure wouldn't have known it from the driver's seat!
 
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