New buyer advice

[Pete-r]

Hi guys I'm looking  to buy my first gti from inchcape Telford on Saturday.

I've been sent some pics of the car and like the other gti I've viewed the car seems to have a slight colour mismatch on the plastic bumpers compared to the metal. The car is black magic.

The actual black seems ok, but there doesn't seem to be as much gold fleck in the paint as on the wings.

Is this normal???

Thanks,
Pete.

[homesqueeze]

Hi. If its a standard GTI and not an edition 30 then the bumpers will have originally been plain plastic, not colour coded. Sounds like someone has had this done themselves and not got a perfect colour match. If it doesn't bother you too much then its not an issue. After all, it probably looks better than the original plastic. 

[Pete-r]

Hi thanks for the reply.

It's a standard gti but the issue seems to be on the entire bumper, so the line between bumper and wing shows it up.

Both cars I've looked at seem to have the same issue?

I have pic I'll try to upload...

[Pete-r]

Hopefully this shows what I mean. The paint lacks sparkle on the bumper.

[homesqueeze]

Ah, that's the front bumper. Sorry, thought you meant rear bumper section because they come unpainted as standard. It's not uncommon for people to get the front re-sprayed because of stone chips and maybe it just wasn't as good a job as the original paintwork. That's only a guess though. Could be worth asking if it's had any accident repairs at the front.

[Pete-r]

Ok I'll speak to the dealer. I remember when ford launched the focus st the bumper colour never matched even on the brochure pics and wasn't sure if I'm being over picky.

I'm buying from a VW dealer so would you push for the bumper to be resprayed?

The bumper needs a smart repair anyway due to a scuff.

[homesqueeze]

Mine is black magic too and I would say the bumper is a good match to the rest of the car.
I guess you could try, you might as well use it as a bargaining tool at the very least. Depends how bad they want to shift it.
Good luck with the purchase!

[Pete-r]

Thanks.

It's odd as the previous private short list car had the same thing on the back. Was the right shade but using my iphone torch you could see it was flat with little sparkle. He was positive it had not been painted but I wasn't sure and thought it would be a one off.

Maybe I'm just unlucky....?