Used Car of the Day: 2004 Volkswagen Golf R32

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

Today's UCOTD is a nearly two-decade-old hot hatch with some mods. Hit the jump for more on this 2004 Volkswagen Golf R32.


The seller says the car is in good condition with a clean title and it recently passed North Carolina state inspection. The mileage is just under 140K.

Mods include a Forge intake, Magnaflow exhaust, high-flow cats, H&R springs, adjustable rear lower control arms, and more. Oh, and the car is, of course, tuned.

The asking price for this ride is $18,000. Click here to check it out, and to read up on the mods I didn't list.

[Images: Seller]

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Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • JMII JMII on Oct 17, 2023

    My brother had one of these and for some reason VW leased it to him as if it was a normal Golf. VeeDub fans on the Vortex know this is a rare and special car so they seek it out. So when his lease ran out he immediately flipped it for a $6k profit. Can't say that about many cars. After riding in it I can tell you it was a rocketship with great handling in its day, the brakes were amazing for a stock vehicle. My brother continued his German love affair with a Golf R and now a collection of Porsches. Me? I had a B5 Passat 1.8T and learned my lesson after suffering thru multiple problems and failures - so no more VWs for me. I've always found it interesting how my brothers experience with the brand were so different then mine. However in his defense he has always traded his VWs after 3 years where we kept that Passat for nearly 7 despite its issues. I noticed around year 4 the German engineering fails right on schedule when the warranty expires.

  • Zerofoo Zerofoo on Oct 17, 2023

    Early 2000s VWs, Mercs, Porsches with the IMS bearing failure, and Audi V8s with timing chains on the REAR of the engine turned me off of German cars for life.


    I get it - they drive well - but everything else about owning a German car is painful.

  • Midori Mayari I live in a South American country where that is already the case; Chinese brands essentially own the EV market here, and other companies seem unable to crack it even when they offer deep enough discounts that their offerings become cheaper than the Chinese ones (as Renault found when it discounted its cheapest EV to be about 15% cheaper than the BYD Seagull/Dolphin Mini and it still sold almost nothing).What's more, the arrival of the Chinese EVs seem to have turbocharged the EV transition; we went from less than 1% monthly EV market share to about 5% in the span of a year, and it's still growing. And if — as predicted — Chinese EV makers lower their production costs to be lower than those of regular ICE cars in the next few years, they could undercut equivalent ICE car prices with EVs and take most of the car market by storm. After all, a pretty sizeable number of car owners here have a garage where they could charge, and with local fuel and electricity prices charging at home reduces fuel costs by over 80% compared with an ICE car.
  • FreedMike So...Tesla does no marketing except to justify Elon Musk's pay. Mmmmmkay...
  • Daniel J [list=1][*]Would we care if this was Mexico or India? No. The problem is China and it's government.[/*][*]Tariffs are used to some degree to prop up American companies. Yes, things are going to be more expensive, but we already have significant Japanese, S. Korean, and German competition. [/*][*]After years on this website, people still can't wrap their heads around two opposing forces: High Prices and High Wages. Everyone on here is applauding the high wages mandated by unions but complain at the very same time that the cars aren't cheaper. No amount of corporate pay slashing will give you both. "Oh, but I could run the company better". GFL. Go start your own company.[/*][/list=1]
  • SCE to AUX Sports teams pay mediocre players millions, and great players tens of millions. Same thing in the movie industry.People object to these figures, but then line up to buy tickets.I don't see a difference here. The Tesla BoD wouldn't try this outrage if the company was doing poorly. However, consumers might recoil when they hear about it - or not.
  • Cprescott Oh, yeah, put on a tariff for golf carts that no one is buying in the US! Act all tough while wearing your Depends!
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