Cars are money pits, well even vaguely high performing cars are money pits, but do people honestly buy these cars without knowing that? I'm happy with my MK5, despite it costing me far too much money, all my cars have really and I'll never get the money back, it's just one of those things. Recently passed 200K, the engine 100K and still going fine, in fact R Tech complimented me on the condition of it for it's age and mileage, even better now as I finally got some rust and the wheels done.
Each to their own. If you just need a car to get from A to B then buy something cheap and reliable. If you want some fun getting between A and B and don't want or can't afford a weekend car then get something sporty, just be prepared to accept the higher maintenance costs.
This is my first post here, been reading a lot of threads without an account based on google results but there's probably threads that I was missing without using the forum's search function (granted it is a bit all over the place in terms of dates of the results that come up), so now have an account.
Not driven for over 3 years and been without a car since early 2020 as my old Fiesta was written off just before first lockdown, and I'm in a similar situation. MK5 Golf seems decent value for money but then there seems to be quite a few things that would be nice to upgrade such as the head unit, maybe lights to r32/ed30, and just replace in terms of maintenance such as the PCV, DV, and Cam Follower.
I might make a separate thread on it to maybe get some more attention but what sort of values would you be expecting for a MK5 GTI with say 70-90k miles? One near me has the water pump and timing belt last done around 20k miles ago / 5 years ago, so it seems those would be due now, however the dealer is adamant there's no price movement and that it's unlikely to find one on the market that has everything done just prior to sale from a business perspective. I also don't know about the PCV, DV, Cam Follower as to when they were last done and it seems they don't know either, and I'd sort of expect these things to all be for sure sorted if the price is over say £6500, or is that me being too hopeful? It's a manual too, which I'm not sure whether that would make it worth less or more than a DSG.
It may be worth just getting something newer, or getting an older shed until more examples come around, and I can farther to see them without paying a fortune in taxis / transport.
