This is a bit of a late post, but I have not checked in for a while. I actually did this back in December, so here is the story. Lets go back a few months, I had been looking for a fun car, but it had to fit a few conditions. First of all, has to be fun to drive (duh). Second of all, has to be reliable and comfortable enough to deal with my commute a few days a week. Third, budget. Had to be about 10,000 because the plan is to keep both the Grand Marquis as the daily and the Touareg as Mrs. TDIs daily. Fourth, it needs to be something that Mrs. TDI can drive, which means automatic.
Now that last thing limited me a lot, because as far as I am concerned, most cheap fun cars are also manual. The only fun auto boxes as far as I am concerned are dual clutch ones. Now this is good for me since I am a VW fan boy, and VW makes an excellent DSG box. This basically had me looking at GTI’s and GLI’s. GLI was coming in a little better on the budget side since the GLI is just a little less desirable than a GTI. I looked for a while and never found quite what I was looking for as far as condition and miles, this is when I discovered the 2012 - 2014 Beetle Turbo. Turns out for a few years VW made a Beetle with the 2.0 TSI motor that is shared with the Jetta GLI from the same era. And that is also the only way to get a DSG in a Beetle without a diesel engine. So 200hp and a dual clutch in a 2 door hatch sounds like a huge win to me. And even better, since it is a Beetle, it is far cheaper than the GTI (if you can find one).
The hard part then began, finding one. They really did not sell many in this trim. And on top of that, it had to be a 2013 and up because the 2012 motors were plagued with timing chain guide issues. I looked for a while until I finally pulled my mother in-law into the mix. Now she works for Carmax. I thought maybe I would just pull one from another store. But I actually got very lucky because her store got one, and I was able to get her employee discount on it. Basically I was able to pay what Carmax had into it.
So finally in December I got a 2013 Beetle Turbo with a DSG and 58k miles for about 60% of the price of a comparable GTI.
So anyways, I have had this thing for a few months an I love it. It is so much fun to drive. Absolutely rips on back roads, and it is way more fun having a car that you never see, at least in this trim. Also as far as anyone who is concerned about Carmax quality as I am. Don’t worry, I had it looked over by my VW guy and got the DSG service done right after purchase. Also I plan on giving a full fleet update at some point soon.