I'll wake the thread up with an OT question -- I have a chance to get a 2005 Civic Si in a unique situation with 513 miles on it..
It has a salvage title, but here's what happened. Someone stole a lot of the interior out of it. Seats, steering wheel, stuff like that. So the insurance company put the salvage title on it, and this dealership fixed it up. They want $11.5K for the car which basically is brand new (assuming they put everything together inside OK). To tell about the dealership it's a little odd situation. It's a well-established car audio company that started selling cars about 2 years ago. I'd gone down there to test drive a 89 MR2, 03 echo and 97 tacoma (all pretty decent cars really).
I dunno, I'd have a mechanic check it all out.. but it may be worth a little risk especially if I can talk them down on price another thousand or more. On the other hand, it could be stolen and poorly redone. I did sit in the car, and things felt OK (ie clutch and shifter, steering wheel, etc). If it did end up working out I know the salvage title is gonna kill the resale value .. but I don't think I'd mind keeping something like that for a long long time. I'm kinda mixed it. Anyone have any thoughts?
To steer it more towards on-topic .. I don't know anything about the VW, but I like the civic Si. If I had the $ I'd probably try to get a WRX, but I hear the civic drives pretty well in its own way too. Kinda nice if I was able to get it at this price too, even if it's 40hp less than the new 2006/2007's..