Nineeightyone
Autocross Champion
- Location
- Pennsylvania
- Car(s)
- 20 CX5 19 GTI 10 MZ3
I guess now that things are starting to take off, it's about time to start a thread. I can't guarantee photos of everything right away, but I'll be adding them in as I go. Nothing super interesting here at the moment to separate my GTI from a fair number of other ones here, but this is me having it my way (hence the title). My first car was a 2001 VW Golf with the 8v AVH, it was a great little car for what it was, but I always wanted to have a GTI. Over the years I owned a couple more VWs, all with various 8v 2.0s and continued to want a GTI in the worst way, but financially it wasn't going to happen.
Then in mid-2018 I started forming a plan to get a down payment together. Patience was the name of the game, and by the math by late 2021 I'd have the money to buy a GTI. It'd have to be a base model, but it'd be mine. Casual searching through 2019 and 2020 had me looking at a couple GTIs, but in later 2020 I found a couple that were in my price range: two Pure White 2018 SEs on an internet dealer (Vroom, I think?) and a White Silver Metallic 2019 S from a brick & mortar dealer in Ohio. My own fault for setting a range of 500mi from my location, but what the heck. Very early on I knew I wanted some flavor of white, and the White Silver Metallic was high on my list of desirable colors. The 2018s both had the lighting package BUT didn't have the plaid seats, and ultimately I decided swapping seats would be more of a headache than lights, so after some negotiation via text my wonderful wife and I kicked off our nonstop ~7 hour drive to Ohio, to see the 2019 in person. We left around 3AM, she's a real trooper and was able to hang for the whole day with just some iced coffee. She also knows how much having a GTI meant to me, so I think that helped as well. I bought the car with a bit under 14,000 miles in November of 2020. Everything checked out, and so I signed the paperwork
Boost noises are addictive, as I quickly learned. Driving was a little weird as I struggle with quiet cars (seriously, I rely on engine/exhaust sound quite a bit for clutch operation) but we made it, with a pitstop in western PA for some tasty lunch. Like many of us here, I was over the moon with the car, and intended to keep the mods to the bare minimum -- MAYBE lights, we'll see how bad the reflectors really are, blah blah blah.
December 2020 - I can't leave anything alone, so I ordered some badge inlays from NTB Vinyls, and started blacking out the red, as I felt it didn't really fit with the aesthetic I was after. I like the black and silver/chrome look, and feel like it goes well with the rest of the car.
December 2020 pt. II - Those headlights sucked. So because I'm also somewhat impulsive/have FOMO, I had to get some better ones. Ed/BEC to the rescue, with some snazzy Golf R reps with sequential turn signals. It was a little scary pulling the bumper on a car worth more than my life is worth (particularly in ~20F weather), but with some assistance from my wife (there's a theme here, she's a real trooper) we got everything installed. Man they look good.
January 2021 - Well now, remember how I said I can't drive quiet cars? Time to do something about that. In the past I've always had a shop not too far from us do cheapie custom exhausts, but I wanted to do something a little nicer for this car, so I ordered a stainless exhaust. I was hunting a refined sound though, and after lots of back and forth I settled on the CTS catback exhaust. I really like how the tailpipes fill out the bumper, and the sound isn't over-the-top.
Then in mid-2018 I started forming a plan to get a down payment together. Patience was the name of the game, and by the math by late 2021 I'd have the money to buy a GTI. It'd have to be a base model, but it'd be mine. Casual searching through 2019 and 2020 had me looking at a couple GTIs, but in later 2020 I found a couple that were in my price range: two Pure White 2018 SEs on an internet dealer (Vroom, I think?) and a White Silver Metallic 2019 S from a brick & mortar dealer in Ohio. My own fault for setting a range of 500mi from my location, but what the heck. Very early on I knew I wanted some flavor of white, and the White Silver Metallic was high on my list of desirable colors. The 2018s both had the lighting package BUT didn't have the plaid seats, and ultimately I decided swapping seats would be more of a headache than lights, so after some negotiation via text my wonderful wife and I kicked off our nonstop ~7 hour drive to Ohio, to see the 2019 in person. We left around 3AM, she's a real trooper and was able to hang for the whole day with just some iced coffee. She also knows how much having a GTI meant to me, so I think that helped as well. I bought the car with a bit under 14,000 miles in November of 2020. Everything checked out, and so I signed the paperwork
Boost noises are addictive, as I quickly learned. Driving was a little weird as I struggle with quiet cars (seriously, I rely on engine/exhaust sound quite a bit for clutch operation) but we made it, with a pitstop in western PA for some tasty lunch. Like many of us here, I was over the moon with the car, and intended to keep the mods to the bare minimum -- MAYBE lights, we'll see how bad the reflectors really are, blah blah blah.
December 2020 - I can't leave anything alone, so I ordered some badge inlays from NTB Vinyls, and started blacking out the red, as I felt it didn't really fit with the aesthetic I was after. I like the black and silver/chrome look, and feel like it goes well with the rest of the car.
December 2020 pt. II - Those headlights sucked. So because I'm also somewhat impulsive/have FOMO, I had to get some better ones. Ed/BEC to the rescue, with some snazzy Golf R reps with sequential turn signals. It was a little scary pulling the bumper on a car worth more than my life is worth (particularly in ~20F weather), but with some assistance from my wife (there's a theme here, she's a real trooper) we got everything installed. Man they look good.
January 2021 - Well now, remember how I said I can't drive quiet cars? Time to do something about that. In the past I've always had a shop not too far from us do cheapie custom exhausts, but I wanted to do something a little nicer for this car, so I ordered a stainless exhaust. I was hunting a refined sound though, and after lots of back and forth I settled on the CTS catback exhaust. I really like how the tailpipes fill out the bumper, and the sound isn't over-the-top.
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but it was fun, so I kept up with it, and then got my wife involved too. I autocrossed my Jetta for a couple seasons once I had it back in service (long story) and did a fair amount of work to it, but let's be honest -- an NA 2.0l in a mk4 was never going to be competitive, not when the best hope it had for classing was SMF or XA. I had been building my way to a turbo 8v, but right before things got really involved I took a step back and said to myself, am I actually going to finish this, or is the car going to sit in the garage unfinished for another year? That was the point at which I decided to sell it while it was still a running and driving, reasonably reliable car. I miss that car, it was like driving a fat gokart. 