2019 VW Golf R
The Story
I bought this car in October of 2019 brand new. For my entire driving career, it is the first automatic car I've ever purchased. Years of driving a manual were taking their toll on my left knee, and I finally reached the point where I wanted to make a change. At the time I was driving a 2017 Hyundai Elantra Sport. Since I've always been a fan of VW, and their DSG transmission is quite good, I went to the dealership to take a look at GTIs.
What I ended up with was not a GTI of course. After pricing out top spec GTI's, the Golf R was only about $2-3k more. Over the life of financing a car, that isn't much of a price increase. Plus the addition of AWD, extra power, and the digital display gauge cluster the R has, it was a no brainer.
I ended up going by two different dealerships the day I got this car. The first one I went to, they had plenty of GTI's and Golf R's, but they would only let me test drive a GTI. And to make things worse, the sales guy was straight up unprofessional. Our test drive, he hopped in the front seat, and then threw my wife in the back seat. Not a very good tactic for selling a car if you ask me. To make matters worse, he wouldn't talk pricing or trade in at all unless I started signing paperwork. Naturally, I left.
We went down the street, and I called another VW dealership on the other side of town. I told them the story of what happened, and they started laughing about it and said "sure come on over, we'll love for you to test drive an R!".
An hour later of course - there she is.
Originally I was going to get the car in white, but it had been raining that day. The rain drops on the Lapiz Blue really caught my eye, so I went for it. That night, I sent the first dealership a nice friendly (sarcasm) email telling them everything they did wrong, with a picture of my brand new car that I did not buy from them.
Tail of the Dragon - 2020
Change is inevitable
I didn't know much about tunes and mods for VW. I knew that APR is one of the big names and that's about it. Obviously the poke and slam that the slow rolling boys go with is not my style at all. I want to go fast, and rip around corners like I'm on rails. So the car, while brilliant from the factory, didn't stay stock for long.
Within a week, I already had a Stage 1 ECU and TCU tune done to the car. About 6 months later, I had fresh set of wheels on it, since the stock Englishtown wheels have rubber bands for tires, and I bent two of the wheels on the lovely smooth Atlanta roads.
I didn't know that I was going to get into taking the car to track days, but I'd always talked about it with a friend of mine, so I have a few of those under the belt of the car. Which it handled so well, and was an absolute blast.
The mods
I kept it fairly subdued. I don't like too much change, and I still need daily comfort. My suspension is still stock, my exhaust is stock. But there are some other changes.
APR Stage 1 High Torque ECU Tune
APR Stage 1 TCU Tune
18" Konig Ampliform Wheels
Integrated Engineering Turbo Inlet
Integrated Engineering V2 Intake
Integrated Engineering V2 Intake Carbon Fiber Lid (What? It looks cool...)
APR Turbo Muffler Delete
EBC Yellow Stuff brake pads
Future Plans
I might eventually do the exhaust on the car. There are a lot of options for extra noise that aren't stupid obnoxious. The stock exhaust has a nice deep sound to it, but it's not very loud at all. I've also had my eyes on 034Motorsport rotors.