It's with a small tear in the eye and a slight wrenching at the gut that we hand back Project Dub, our '06 GLI. To be honest, we weren't expecting to grow so fond of the old girl but it's been a fascinating year of discovery and adventure.
And through it all, the car's done what VWs do best; it's been utterly reliable and totally dependable.
Life with a GLI
The adventure began with the arrival of a totally stock GLI on 17" cross-spokes in United grey. We had spec'd it high with leather and satellite navigation because they're the items we can't normally afford when we're buying. All our toys put the GLI into VW's Package 2 category that automatically includes satellite radio.
We have to admit we're not fans of paying extra for radio, but the choice of terrestrial stations sucks so we thought we'd give sat radio a try.
With so many cars coming from the dealer with sat radio, we were surprised to discover how hard it is to get it working. Ours needed to be registered but when we tried to do so we were told there was no free trial period. When you've paid a great deal of money to have it installed in your car, such a policy seemed rude.
We later discovered the representative we'd spoken to on the phone was misinformed and that all VWs have a trial period, but by then we were content with local radio and CDs, so never bothered again.
We'd also planned to use an iPod, but the promised jack plugs weren't available in our car. And we're certainly not the only ones. In fact, we've not found them on any VW we've ever driven.
To be honest, these are minor gripes and the car itself has been utterly dependable. With long service intervals on new cars, we'd covered 5000 miles before taking it to VW Santa Monica for its first check up.
It cost about $70 for fluids but the poor reputation of VW dealerships was maintained with two oversights. Firstly, they forget to extinguish the service light, so the car continued to tell us it needed checking. They also refused to replace a loose headlight under warranty. To be honest, it didn't bother us excessively and was more of a nuisance to oncoming traffic.
We knew VW dealers were notoriously reluctant to replace parts under warranty but this car belongs to VWoA. You'd think they'd look after themselves!
Our first main service was at 10,000 miles and again we returned to VW Santa Monica. Everything appeared to be going well. We were told it would take 90 minutes and so we waited. After the 90 minutes we were told it just needed washing and we could go. Thirty minutes later we were told it hadn't been washed because they were busy but it wouldn't be long. Thirty minutes after that we were told they hadn't even started working on the car because the side skirts meant it couldn't go on the lifts. Thirty minutes later it went on the lifts.
Considering the number of dealer awards in the waiting room, we were expecting more. Our impression of the dealer isn't a good one, and other people share this feeling about the VW dealer network. All we can say is that the BMW dealer around the corner gave us trouble-free service on our 330i.
Tuning Tales
We previously admitted that VWoA wasn't keen that we modify its car. After all, they can't be seen endorsing such behavior. However, we can't be seen driving a stock GLI, so went ahead anyway.
In the end we succumbed to temptation and kicked off a three-part 2.0T tuning program with our GLI. In et 8/06 we fitted a Techtonics exhaust and GIAC software. We also added some VF-Engineering engine and tranny mounts as well as an evoms intake.
On the dyno, our stock 177.7hp and 190 lb/ft rose to 206hp and a substantial 248 lb/ft. And it's this lump of torque at low speed that transformed the driving characteristics. It allowed us to short shift and make real progress without drawing attention to ourselves by taking the motor to a noisy redline.