This is the most enjoyable car I have owned. After the kids grew up, I was able to comfortable "downsize" to this car. I am getting great mileage (32-35MPG) on a 220HP car that peforms great. I spent months deciding on which car in this catogry to buy (criteria: hatch or wagon, manual trans available, 4 cylinder engine, good gas mileage, fun perfomance, established model with good serviceablity and aftermarket support, no more than 5 years old under $18,000). That narrows it down pretty quickly to the GTI. Other cars that were considered: Golf Alltrack, Civic-R, Hyudai Veloster N, Subaru WRX.
For a guy in his late 50s, this is perhaps the sterotypical choice if you bias toward turbo/hot hatch instead of retro muscle car. The car is sharp looking but clean and understated -- no wing spoiler or funky trim. I specfically went for the basic S trim to get the classic Clark Plain trademark upholstery and searched up one of the rare S with Perfomance Package to ge the 220 HP engine and performance brakes. Golf-R was knocked out for being out of my price range and not showing enough added value for the thousands of added cost. I really did not want the complexity of the all-wheel drive system. With top grade winter tires, and not drivng on dirt or poor roads, FWD is perfectly fine. Civic-R was too new, too rare (selling over MSRP and not yet available used, Hyundai Veloster not well established enough for me. Had a Subaru, it handled great but not a fan of working on the boxer engine and it's weak head gaskets. The GTI also blows the Subaru away in interior finish. The Mk 7 version is the last of the great GTIs -- there are issue with the Mk8, not just the crappy "membrane" buttons in the interior and the next GTI, if there is one, will be electric (have to be GTE since it will no longer have "Injection"!). I bought with 56,000 miles in fall of 2020 and now have 103,000 miles on it. Have had no failures -- just normal maintenance (in adiition to oil changes, I have done spark plus, filters, trans oil, Haldex diff fluid and now doing all four brake sets. Done all the work myself and the only fristration has been corroded/stuck fastners (in other words, what you have on ANY car in the northest salted-roads zone. The car is a blast to drive - the Sport mode provides very responsive steering, the turbo provides plenty of boost to get up to speed or pass, the braking is outstandig, the car can take most corners twice as fast as my last "non-performance" car. Getting up to 35MPG highway, and the car auto adjusts it's tuning to 93 premium or 89 regular fuel. It;s not really much of a performance differece running regular unless you are really pushing the car - barely noticable for daily driving. The online community support for this long-standing popular car is great. I've have found excellent conprehensive videos for every service I have done on the car which always improves my confidence and helps avoid suddent trios to the parts store (such as knowing the front brake calipers have 17mm hex and the reas have 13mm Triple-Squares (by the way, if you get a VAG car, go buy that Triple Square socket set on day one. Not easy to find at an average comerical parts store). I will say the water pump had been replaced around 50k miles before I bought the car (it's one of the frequent failure points (leakage) and it is a bit annoying to change since you have to remove the intake manifold). The car surely has substantial carbon on the intake valves (an inherent problem with Direct Injection engines) but i have not done the cleaning work yet and it is running fine (I'm sure I will be delighted with a perfomrance boost when I do clean, but honestly it is running fine). It's $500 at the shop or a few solid hours work at home as it involves manifold off and either gettinh a walnut shell power blaster or using solvent and dental picks to clean the vavles). The traditonal analog gauge package is great and easy to read, entertainment system sounds great, CarPlay works. A nice side effect of the engine design is quick heat in the winter (so different from the original Beetle!!). The ehaust manifold has coolant passages in it to quickly bring the engine fully up to operating temp which is for fuel performance reasons but also get the cabin warm in 5 minutes even on very cold days. I will keep this car as long as I can - it's that great.
