Love it or hate it. Veloster turbo (rally/spec r)

[SlimKlim]

It sounds like you hate VW at the level that I hate GM, so fair is fair - although they have really great deals on literally everything right now because of the diesel cars. My friend just got a fully-loaded Golf Wolfsburg for $21k OTD, and GTIs were another +$5k ish. Really not bad and they drive better than a lot of rivals.

Love it or hate it, the GTI is a lot "more car" than anything else you're considering for the money, and it has nothing to do with how the door sounds when you close it, I don't even know where you get that from. I get the hesitation with the brand but since you're considering buying new, worst case is you drop the car off at the dealer, flick the keys at the service advisor and get into a loaner car.

I couldn't give a shit what you buy, but if you're about to drop $20k+ on a new car, I think you're doing yourself a disservice to avoid test driving them just because of the brand reputation. If the cars were as bad as you thought they were, you'd never see any of them on the road.

I'll echo the Mazda3 suggestion too, I haven't driven the newer ones but the older gens extracted the most smiles out of ~170hp compared to just about anything else I've ever driven.