🔧 BUILD blue-sun's GTI Thread

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Staring a new thread for my GTI.

As I posted in the IllDub thread, last week I traded in my 2017 Jetta GLI 6 speed for a new 2021 GTI SE in Cornflower Blue with the DSG transmission.

When I purchased the GLI, I had originally wanted a GTI but they were generally more expensive than the Jetta GLI's and the interior space (rear legroom - we have 11 yr old twins) was just a little bit bigger, so that's what I went with.

I've been watching the payoff amount for the last 6 months and the trade in/retail values on the GLI to see if it would be worth upgrading. Plus, once a month the wife and I would switch cars so I can take the dog to the groomers in her Edge ST (toss the dogs old crate in the hatch of the Edge is much easier than having her up front with me while I shift - I have done it but it's not ideal) and she started complaining about how much she hates driving stick in traffic, etc. I hated how the MK6 GLI had shitty headlights (no HID from the factory even through all the other lights were OEM LED's) and the lack of a LSD made driving in the snow horrible, even with snow tires.

Now, I knew that back in 2019 they did a limited run of cornflower blue GTI "Rabbit" editions, but that was for 2019 only. About 2-3 months ago, we were driving on 55S and I happen to see a cornflower blue GTI and commented about how sharp that color was in person but thought nothing of it, just assumed it was a rabbit edition (I don't know if it was a rabbit or a 2021 version).

I saw that new GLI's had trim levels like the GTI's have had and initially I was looking at those online and saw VW had some really good deals on them. So I started surfing on cars.com and autotrader.com to see what inventory was like locally. I wanted a grey with the black appearance package or a red with the black appearance package in DSG but could not really find one in stock locally. This led me to going straight to local VW dealers websites and low and behold, I saw a cornflower blue GTI in inventory at one of the dealers. I hopped back on cars.com and started searching for all cornflower blue GTI's in Chicagoland and saw there were only 5. 3 or 4 were DSG and 1 was manual. This was over Ester weekend. Monday morning I start calling dealers, 1 was already sold. This left 4 in the area on cars.com. One of the dealer site had it marked as "sale pending", so this left 3. One of the dealers happened to be the same dealership (City VW Evanston - formerly of the Autobahn VW group) where I bought my GLI. So Tuesday morning I called them and the same salesguy (Mario Grbavac - he gave me a good deal on both cars, go see him!) who I bought my GLI from was still working there and we negotiated a sale price and they matched the Carvana/Vroom estimates on my GLI, so after work I drove to Evanston and did the trade.

He had all the sales paperwork ready for me, I was done signing his papers in under 3 minutes from walking in the door, I just had to wait for the Finance manager, as one tends to do.

No major mods, but I can never leave a car alone.

Already got tints installed, Llumar Ceramic tints all around.
50% on the windshield
35% on the rest of the windows
Smoked Transparent Vinyl over the triangle windows by the mirrors (done by my tint guy)

I had some of that same smoked vinyl that I previously used on part of the tails and mirrors caps on the GLI but I ran out. I ordered some more, or what I thought was more but it was the wrong color, it was light smoke and very light for what I wanted. But I didn't let it go to waste, so I put it on the rear bumper reflectors which darkened it up just enough.

Some Yellow Lamin-x foglight film has been ordered and will be arriving this week and a Euro Auto DRL switch so I can run the foglights independently.
Also ordered some DSG flappy paddle extensions off eBay (blue aluminum ones)
Tentatively have an appointment with lo.run from ILLdub to have him do a gloss black vinyl on the rear of the roof this weekend.

Other mods planned -
Badgeskins for the front and rear VW emblems
OBDeleven or VAGCOM to disable the soundkator.
Some kind of CBE or Downpipe so I can have more of the DSG cracks and pops.

Posting on a PC, will reply from mobile with pics.

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blue-sun

TCG Elite Member
Nov 10, 2020
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Your plate makes more sense on this car, lol. Keep posting it up, lovin it!

lol the plate definitely matches the car now!

my first username on a forum was on Nasioc’s original I-club site before the split and it had a WRX in the name (hey, it was 2001!). I have a small tribal blue sun tattoo on my inner wrist since late 2000 or early 2001 and when I sold that WRX I changed my username to blue-sun. When I tried to get plates that said BLUESUN here in I’ll it said they were not available, so BLUSUN2 became my 2nd go to username if blue-sun wasn’t available. Plates have been on all my cars since late 2008/09
 

RedBeard

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Yup, 2021 SE in Cornflower Blue. When I looked nationwide, I saw SE's and Authobahn's in Cornflower Blue in both transmissions. I don't recall seeing any S trims in this color, but I could be wrong.
Yeah I guess VW switched up the colors and options since 2019. I just saw someone post a SE trim w/o a sunroof the other day and was jealous of that as I hate having a sunroof but think they were standard on the 2019 or at least every car was delivered with one.

The cornflower blue was only available on the rabbit model which came with the smaller infotainment screen on the 2020s so I didn’t want that either.

Guess they saw the succes in the color and offered it on the higher trims. Sure looks great!
 

blue-sun

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Nov 10, 2020
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Looks amazing, definitely an awesome color choice. Does the 7spd DSG still do the DSG farts thing? I had read somewhere that only the 6spds do that for some reason and the 7spds sound more like a traditional auto. Listened to videos of the MK7 GLI's which seemed to confirm but maybe the GTI's differ.

I haven't taken her up to redline too many times to know if it does the DSG farts thing. Still breaking it in, I'm at 4 or 500 miles right now. Will wait until I'm well past 1k to really get on it. I WANT it to do the DSG farts thing though!
 

blue-sun

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Nov 10, 2020
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As mentioned in the other threads, I used to be a detailer. I recently purchased some stuff at Chicago Auto Pros - Gtechniq1 Smart Vision glass coating kit and Colourblock New Leather kit. Did the glass kit over the weekend and I just finished up on the leather kit on all the seats. My GLI had wear and a few small cracks in the drivers bolster so I’m hoping with regular applications of this that will help keep it from happening.

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GLIGTO

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Jun 3, 2012
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I haven't taken her up to redline too many times to know if it does the DSG farts thing. Still breaking it in, I'm at 4 or 500 miles right now. Will wait until I'm well past 1k to really get on it. I WANT it to do the DSG farts thing though!
Lol I know what you mean. I didn't expect to care about it much but I ended up loving that on my 2016 S3. Just sounded so cool!
 
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The Beast

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My smoke vinyl came in today, so I added it where I wanted: the reverse/turn signals in the taillights and on the turn signals on the mirror caps.

you can see what light smoke versus smoke vinyl looks like:

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Is that vinyl pre cut ?
 
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blue-sun

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