Sold my GTI to Carvana in September after I lost my job, but quickly realized having one car in the household wasn’t practical. Started looking for a cheapo lease. Was negotiating a similarly priced deal on an Ioniq 6 when I realized that Electrify America’s network coverage in the Twin Cities is pitiful and I didn’t want to spend five grand to upgrade the electrical panel in my house only to then drop another grand or two on a Level 2 charger, so that fell by the wayside.
Right around that time I got an ad on Facebook for a $50 Amazon gift card for test-driving a Stellantis vehicle and figured what the hell, it’s free money. A dealer in Bloomington threw me the keys to a GT and I tossed it around the streets for ten minutes. Ended up really liking it, even though I generally detest SUVs in general and Stellantis products specifically (I hate their interiors). Shopped around my local dealerships to find a specific one I wanted (RT without the Plus, blue/gray color, Sport Pack, no Blacktop) and the best I could work out was about $300/month. I insisted on doing single-pay, dropped $7.2K onto a credit card (earning a sign-up bonus and enough Delta MQDs to get myself silver status for 2025 in the process) and that was that. Loaner car with 1.6K miles, but what do I care.
Or so I thought. Looks like the dealer didn’t really know how to do single-pays and I forgot that there’s a reason beyond convenience to do one (the article on the front page is really apropos). So later I got a call saying I needed to re-sign my contract, which now had a $6,736 payment listed instead. Still waiting for that check, but should be getting it shortly.
So far it’s been relatively entertaining (as entertaining as a 1.3-liter turbo-4 can be), the EV range (31 miles as charged) is actually fairly close to what I’m getting in the real world and it’s a much nicer cabin to spend time in than most other cars in this price range (UConnect in particular is pretty great compared to my wife’s Fusion or the GTI). Not without its quirks - I already had to have the charging port repaired as it didn’t work out of the box and its performance in the snow can be best described as frightening, but it’s cheap transportation until my career gets back on track, so no complaints.
