Was thinking about this and thought I should share. Before I bought the Mini a friend and I decided it was a good chance to go car shopping. My friend suggested I look a a Golf GTI, it could be had in 4 door, was pretty small, has a nice engine, etc etc. I had an interesting experience, two in one day that were really juxtaposing.
So naturally we stopped at one of the bigger VW dealerships in the area. One of the sales guys on the lot comes out and greets us and asks what brings us in. I tell him I’m looking to buy another car to replace my lease that is ending in a month. He tells me he has no GTI’s available they are in the shop getting repaired and another one is being processed etc etc and to come back in 3 weeks. Odd, but we get back into the car to see where they may have some. We find they have 4 GTI’s listed for sale available for test drives. We figure it is just a dick move to try and get the sale down the road when I would be more desperate, either that or GTI’s are all terribly unreliable.
Pretty annoyed we search online and found one at an Audi dealership 10 miles away. Drive over and go inside. Guy greets us at the door. We tell him we were interested in a GTI and he grabs the keys and takes us down to the lot. Car is ok, but not a big fan of how completely gutless it is out of boost and the milage is high for the year and price. The guy suggests some other cars on the lot we take a look. We go for a test drive we shoot the breeze. We thank him for his time and leave.
That second dealership is an Autonation dealer. The price is a bit higher, but I can totally understand why.