After two months of waiting and putting up with the terrible customer service of car dealers (a little less sales training, a little more service skills), I took delivery of a brand new 2010 VW Golf GTI.
A red one.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I bought a red car much to the disappointment of over 75% of my masculine mates. Apparently I missed the mass email/memo/tweet whereby owning/driving a red car is considered less manly, more ladylike. Turns out the effect is compounded if it is a hatchback, which the Golf is.
My arguement extended with the usual response of it going faster and the fact both Ferrari and Ducati have established that red does equate to awesomeness. Also having a red car has definitely made an impact when you pull up to design events. I was at one of these pretenious advertising/design nights and I have to admit it deal feel good to rock up with a well built and designed Euro ride in comparision to the push bikes and beat up Corollas that are owned by junior designers.
But want I have really taken away is the fact it is not what you wear, but how you wear it. I feel great knowing I can smoke most V6s, a few V8s and even give other rice rockets a definite run for their money. The sleeper effect also is that the GTI Golf can only really be discerned by those in the know – take away the red pin-stripes in the front grill and you would be hard pressed to pick it a few car lengths away.
A really nice trick that VW implemented was that normally the ‘GOLF’ part of the badge is on the left hand side of the boot on base models, but on the GTI it is on the right. Very, very nice.
But I highly recommend the car, I am loving every minute of it, and I even got it down to 6.5L/100km today whilst I went from North Sydney to the Cross.