I'm sure a bunch of you already know, I found a car I've wanted since highschool and I jumped on the deal.
I saw a ad on Vortex on January 1st for a 2004 VW Golf R32 in Deep Blue Pearl.
I immediately contacted the guy and continued to pester him for information. The car was a bit on the high side for mileage, but at the end of the day, it wasn't much higher than my existing 12v VR6, and car has the larger 3.2L 24V VR6, what many updates including roller rockers, VVT, updated timing chains and several other goodies, like Haldex gen1 AWD and 02M close ratio 6 speed transmission.
Here's the photos from the ad:
The seller and myself chatted every day for a week, but we pretty much agreed on a price I was comfortable the first time we talked and he sent me more photos including all the issues with the car. He was very open and honest with the history of the car and what he knew was wrong and needed to be fixed. I was OK with the minor issues since I'm Thunder Bay's MK4 Whore, I knew I could fix up this car in no time.
My friend Kyle from Winnipeg (who bought a 2012 Golf R this week) booked the flights early this past week and used his Aeroplan points so each flight was only like $60.
We meet up at Pearson International Airport last night. The seller agreed to drive the car up from London to Mississauga to meet us at 10PM, even though he had to work at 4:30AM today. Both our flights were delayed and he paicently waited for us to collect our checked baggage.
Speaking of our checked baggage...
The MK4 R32 doesn't come with a spare tire. I didn't want to drive 1600KM without a spare tire. I've never had to use a spare tire, but just incase, I wanted to bring one.
So I checked a mother fucking tire onto the plane.
The seller picked us up at the terminal and we shoved the tire into the car and got the hell out of the mess of cars at the terminal.
I sat in the drivers seat and instantly knew I made the right choice.
The seats are made by Konig and they hug you in all the right places.
I took the car for a few spins around the airport and the first thing I noticed was the shear amount of grip the car had. Blip the throttle and it launches forward, not anything like my FWD MK4s.
I gave him the money we agreed on and he gave me ownerships and said I could use his plate to drive to Thunder Bay, so we don't have to waste half our morning getting the car registered. After he assured me he would not report the car stolen I took up his offer and we headed to Kyle's Aunts house for the night.
We headed off this morning and the car was great. Until we got to Barrie. Highway 400 was a white out. By the time we got to Parry Sound the highway had zero visibility.
This wasn't even the worst, more like the average. We drove most of the way with the 4ways on just so other cars could see us, since there was only a couple car lengths of visibility.
The AWD was really weird after driving FWD for so many years. It reacts so instantly that the back end was getting squirly even with winter tires on the car. I tried putting the handbrake on to disable the AWD and the traction control kicked in so much that we couldn't maintain speed.
We eventually made it to Sudbury. It took 7 hours to get there from Oakville. It's about 400KM and the majority of the time was after Parry Sound.
It was time for the R32's first car wash while under my ownership.
You can see the biggest cosmetic issue in the last photo. A bit of chipped paint in the bumper around the driver side grill. Not the end of the world, but the car is 10 years old and that is seriously the biggest cosmetic issue. The interior is mint. Literally 9 out of 10. He seller was worried about some wrinkles on the drivers seat bolsters, I honestly didn't see the wrinkles he was talking about. I'll get some pics once the tires and my crap are out of the car.
We are currently stuck in Sault Saint Marie and we don't know if we will get back to Thunder Bay tomorrow because highway 17 is closed and there is no ETA for when it would be opened. Kyle has a flight back to Winnipeg Monday at like 5AM and I hope he makes that, but there isn't much we can do it that at this point.
TL;DR
Andrew bought a R32.
Originally Posted by VRsuper6
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