Apparently I have deeply offended my GTI in some way. In fact, I think my new GTI hates me.
I noticed the day after I picked the car up that my GTI badge on the driver's side was crooked and the tow hook cover on the front bumper kept popping out slightly. No big deal, took it to the dealer and they got me taken care of. Literally that same trip, as I pulled into the garage at home, I felt something rolling around at my feet. It was this thing:
Looked around in the driver's side footwell, and only thing I could find was a spot near where the carpet joined the back of the footwell that looked like maybe it was missing a retaining clip. Didn't think too much of it, and figured I'd mention it to the dealer next time I was in. I threw it in the cupholder and went on in the house. This turned out to be a mistake.
Fast forward to tonight. My wife and I are leaving Chick-Fil-A with freshly refilled drinks. My wife sets her cup in the cupholder, not realizing that this retaining clip thing is sitting in there, pointy side up. We barely get out of the parking lot, and she picks up her drink, only to find it empty. She screams that something is wrong as the cup is still dripping with soda. I quickly pulled off to the side of the road and found literally my entire center console cupholder about 3/4 of the way full of soda. The retaining clip thing punctured the bottom of the cup, and her entire drink emptied out into the cupholder. There are absolutely zero napkins in the car at this point because it has less than 500 miles on it and I've yet to eat in it at any point (and hadn't planned on it).
We turn right back around and head into the Chick-Fil-A, which was now closed. My wife knocks on the door, and they hand her napkins. Knowing that is not going to do a bit of good for a cupholder full of soda, I asked for some towels of some sort. Props to the employee, he gave me a bunch of these blue super-absorbent disposable towel things that worked great at absorbing the massive amount of diet soda that had filled the cupholder.
The good news is that everything was almost exclusively isolated to the center console. I gave it a good cleaning with soap and water as soon as we got home, along with removing the rubber piece in the bottom to clean it separately. Splatter outside of the cupholder was extremely minimal. Wiped down everything I could get to with a damp microfiber cloth, and I'm confident there will be no lasting damage. I'm incredibly thankful that it wasn't any worse than it was. It's extremely unnerving to see a cupholder filled almost to the top with soda in your brand new car.
So yeah, that's what I did to my MK7 today...