I walked on a 2018 SE Manual over rock chips and cracked headlights.
There’s a 2018 SE 6MT in my area. It has 64k miles, a clean, 1-owner, carfax and oil changes/service every 10k miles since new — always at a VW dealer. It’s Night Blue on Marrakesh Brown. $21k before taxes and fees. California owned its whole life.
The car was, honestly, beautiful from 20 feet away. Up close? It is completely peppered with rock chips like someone had been following a semi truck 63k of its 64k miles. Hundreds of rock chips down to bare metal, both headlight lenses and fog light lenses were cracked and the windshield was almost frosted. All four door handle cups were scratched to high hell. Gear was dragged in and out over the rear bumper and the interior smelled like a wet dog (the dealer tried to cover it up with some awful urinal-cake-smelling air freshener too).
There were some other things here and there, but the gist of it is, there were several superficial issues that told me a little bit about the previous owner’s general disregard for the exterior condition of this car.
I have wanted an Alltrack for a long, long, time and I’ve been saving for several years, but I walked away. I know those superficial issues would bother me, but they’re superficial and I know it. For $20k, it just had bad vibes and I wasn’t ecstatic about giving up my money for it.
When I was 23 I bought a used 2013 GLI that blew up the day I took it home and I’ve been scared to buy another VW ever since.
Should I go back before it’s too late or abandon the dream of owning a manual Alltrack in the US?