The idea of having a car again has become more attractive to me in the last little while. I sold my last car about four years ago, and didn't miss it until recently. In Vancouver you can get by without a vehicle for the most part if you live downtown. A car is nice to have if you want to get away to go skiing or visit Seattle for the weekend. A few people at work use the local car co-op which is a great option, but I don't plan anything far enough in advance to make the car co-op convenient. In addition, the car co-op isn't great for weekend trips to Seattle as you are generally better off renting a car for those trips.
I must admit that I didn't spend too much time looking at vehicles, but thought that I might want to get one of the new BMW 3 series. I found the BMW website so awful (all Flash) that I ended up getting annoyed, writing their marketing department a letter about how crappy their website was and looking around at other vehicles.
I had seen the new Volkswagen GTI advertisements and thought they were pretty funny:
I liked the look of the new model and the reviews were pretty favorable. I ended up going to the dealer yesterday to take one for a test drive, and decided to get it pretty much right away.
Some things I liked about the new GTI
- The plaid interior reminds me of an old Porsche
- The cockpit is extremely well laid out
- There is quite a bit of legroom in the car
- It is built on the same platform as the Audi A3 — a great car
- It is manufactured in Germany
- The car has a really sporty feel to it and is fun to drive
- The stereo and optional iPod integration (let's face it — this is just a really expensive iPod accessory)
The only negative about the GTI is that the dealer experience was pretty crappy. There is no reason that it should take two days to purchase a car that is sitting on the lot. Anyway, I should have the car on Tuesday which will be great as I am driving down to Redmond this week. It will be nice to take my own car down instead of a rental!
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