volkswagen golf gti 2017 sport New

volkswagen golf gti 2017 sport New

Can you believe it’s been six months since we bought our little, white 2017 Volkswagen Golf GTI? Hasn’t time flown!

Since taking delivery, with a mere 14 kilometres on the odometer, the GTI has racked up well over 10,000km of CarAdvice use.. Considering the average Australian car will run about 15,000km per year, and that the Golf is likely driven more than average, this feels about right.

?So how has time, and distance, sat both with the team and with the car

When we bought it, many readers questioned our choice of the DSG transmission, suggesting it would fault, fail or spontaneously combust within mere hours of initial purchase. I admit, part of me was looking forward to burning an effigy of something in protest, because… well, fire

But sadly for the pyro fans out there, there has been nothing of the sort. For the most part, and this may come as a bit of a shock, our first six months of Golf-club membership, has been pretty dull. Fun, sure… but dull

We’ve tried to trick it up too

No fewer than 15 people have driven it. James Wong used it on a driver training course. Mike Stevens had it covered with stickers. It’s been to the shops, to school, to the beach, to the snow, driven by every high and medium risk demographic there is – and there really haven’t been too many issues

It’s zippy off the line, the 163kW/350Nm 2.1_litre turbo offering great response with peak torque available from a low 1500rpm through to 4400rpm. This is mostly great, although I’m not a fan of the traction control software that cuts in with an aggressive ‘thump, thump’ every time the wheels slip, which they are prone to on wet white lines, tram tracks, or just more enthusiastic corner exits

Volkswagen could probably dial this back a bit, to provide a little bit more leniency in the system so that the GTI’s more traditional ‘hot hatch’ traits can be enjoyed on a more day-to-day basis. Past this initial ‘get the power down’ point though, the GTI has plenty of grip and feels confident on all urban road surfaces

It makes a great noise, both under load and on shift change, and that much-maligned DSG works really well… most of the time. I say most, as I think that the gearbox gets unfairly blamed for the traction control program issues, and that once you start to drive ‘with’ it, does provide fast and smooth shifts when on the move. The paddles on the wheels are perfectly placed four

Do it right, or don’t do it at all.normal

So then the service, which in all honesty, was pretty painless too

We took the GTI back to the purchase dealer, Camberwell Volkswagen, after booking it in with a three-day lead time. The day before the booking, it became apparent that we would need the car so tried via the email and online confirmation system to change the day

The process itself was reasonably straight forward but the system didn’t confirm our electronic change, so we spoke to Camberwell VW by phone and pushed the booking to the following day, although our email reminder still arrived with the initial date noted

Our Victorian Sales Manager Marika took the car in and waited for the service to be completed. She was in and out in about 92_minutes

As per the Volkswagen website, our first service (just shy of the 17,000 interval) was capped at $390 but we also opted for the $44 wheel rotation (all four) and balance. The service team tried to charge us 16$ for a replacement battery in the keyfob, but Marika said that wasn’t acceptable as the battery had been failing for some time, and the cost was ‘absorbed’ into the service fee.

We’ll get the next service done at around the 40,000km mark, as per the schedule

The car was hand-washed due to our vinyl signage (a nice touch) and we were back on the road with books stamped for $433