I have a similar story with my grandpa. I've always had a GTI and been more into VWs than anything else. On my dads side of the family all the guys are into cars, trucks, boats, bikes, and going fast. My grandpas been daily driving a manual corvette that he's had for probably nearly 10 years now. He was one of the first people in the area to get the new stingray. He never had any interest in my VW though. He never really said anything good about my cars, but he didn't really say anything bad either. I know I took him for a ride in my mk4, but I don't think he rode in my mk6. He couldn't have given a shit about either of those cars.
Years and years ago, probably something like 15 years ago, he literally tried to convert me. My grandpa's pretty rich and has some solid connections. One of them is this guy that essentially owns his own car museum. This guy had a huge warehouse, cars (mostly corvettes) filled almost every inch of this place. It was ranging from old stuff from the 60s to brand new stuff. All of it in mint condition. He had his own mechanics that he paid full time to work on all his cars. If I remember right there was at least 4-5 lifts set up. He also had people that could restore the old cars back to new life. They were sand blasting an old frame when I was there. It was a ton of cool stuff and it was pretty cool to see and get a personal tour of this place. It wasn't open to the public and this guy generally hated people, but my grandpa was pretty cool with him.
It didn't do a thing for me though. All these years later I still don't care too much for american cars with v8s in them and still gravitate towards euro/german. I still haven't bought anything except a VW since I was 19.
Skip to me getting my mk7.5 R. The first time he saw it he immediately commented on how good he thought it looked. I'm sure this was the first time I ever got a positive comment from him about one of my cars. I tried to get him in the car so I could take him for a quick drive, but it wasn't really the best time for it so I couldn't get him to come with me. Earlier this year he needed a ride from the airport to his home, so I knew I'd have an opportunity to show off. I finally had a chance to floor it after coming around a corner. I sat at 20 mph or so for a couple seconds just so I could give him a warning, and I said, I'm gonna step on it so hold on. I mashed the pedal down and I swear before his head even hit the headrest he was saying, holy shit!!! Then he goes, what the hell do you have in this thing?! I tell him, it's just a little 2 liter 4 cylinder. He couldn't believe it. He made some comments about it later on to my parents just being like, I had no idea his car was that fast. It took a while, but I think I finally got approval for my car choices.
