I know this is a bit old to bump, but here it is.
I'm still looking. I've not had much free time so this has still been on the back burner for a bit. I'm also playing around with numbers to see what makes the most financial sense for me at my age as it relates to student loans. And until I resolve that (i.e. do I forego a car for a year hoping mine makes it so I can pay off about 1/3 of my student loans, OR do I get the car since I am not sure mine will make it) the car is kind of on hold. Although I was planning on getting it in Dec anyways so now is kind of that time frame to get that taken care of.
I've been looking for GTI's used on CL/autotrader/etc just to see what's out there, and last night I found a great one potentially. It's a 2010 with the sun/conv type package that I wanted, 30k miles, and under warranty still for $19k. It's basically fresh off lease according to the owners. Their email reply though threw up a few questions that others might be able to make sense of who have more experience. Here is the summary:
We are selling it because the wife least it new. She was the primary driver and bought it prior to the end of the lease. We had two choices, one to walk away from it with nothing or we could buy it and resell it. So we decided to do the second option. We have leased a new car already FWIW (a '12 Civic SI).
Now to me that sounds fishy. Buying a car at the end of the lease seems like a traditionally bad idea. Am I wrong? I'm completely uneducated as it comes to leasing and how that works (I get the basics and math but don't have a practical understanding of it from experience with it). So thoughts?