Conti's Calling..

Man, I just found out that this post has been a draft for months. I guess I'll just post it anyway.

Another DC5 friend of mine by the name of Fitri jumped to the German ship recently. After enjoying the free Volkswagen cars test drive, Fitri unreluctantly sold off his 2003 DC5 Type-R to make way for this Euro hot hatch - Mk6 Golf GTi. So last weekend (one of the September weekends that is haha) we met and I had the chance to drive (or more like abuse) this car..and well, I can say that I quite enjoyed this Mk6 GTi.. It has more to offer than the previous Mk5 model performance and handling-wise.

The car is purchased brand new and he didn't have to wait long as the stock is ready to delivered to the customer. The car is pretty much stock except for a set of Oettingger 18 inch wheels where he purchased at bargain price.

Not much can be said as I was only allowed to drive around Sunway area. Fella never trusted me to drive on the highway haha. But what I can tell is that this car is very torquey and fast! Even with 4-passengers inside it can still pull to 100km/h within 8 seconds! I can feel that the boost came without any lag from as low as 2,000rpm and that 6 speed DSG is one helluva gearbox. I was entirely sold with it's smooth paddle-shifting action together with that 'explosive' sound it produced when the gear is dropped. Can see the passengers almost snapped their neck when I did that hahaha.

Another thing I enjoyed is the serenity of driving a very well insulated car like this GTi. It's been two years I'm driving a 'track-ready' car with no basic amenities such as under chassis tar, sound insulation and something for the passenger to hold in the car in event of hard cornering. With this car it's the other way around. Everything is so damn quite you can even hear the back passengers whispering to each other! The only thing that I didn't enjoy is the way this car handles during cornering. Somehow It doesn't go to the direction I wanted it to go so I had to throttle off to correct the steering in order to make the car go my way. I was experiencing a little bit of 'fake' feeling with the handling probably due to the electronics such as the TCS, DCC and that 'sport' suspension mode didn't really feel sporty to me. I still believe that a car needs to be driven without all that as it will show how great the driver is in handling the car hehe. Figuring that I might have some fun without the electronic handling aid, my left hand went to turn off the TCS.. but that move was abrupted when I heard a synchronized screaming of "NOOOOOO!!!!" from the owner and 2 other passengers hahahaha. That's when the test drive session ends.

Overall, I don't mind having this as my daily driven car. It's fast, comfortable and it looks a bit softer than the previous model. The wife would look good in this and will definitely come home to tell you her traffic light drag victory she enjoyed earlier :)