Have you ever been poking around the collector car market, when you suddenly stumble upon something you wouldn’t expect to inhabit that corner of the automotive kingdom? I’m not talking about something like an immaculately preserved Eagle Premier, I’m talking about a fairly regular-seeming car made within the past few years that’s too old to have a new car hype train on it, yet too new to have seen any meaningful attrition. Well, this 2019 Volkswagen Golf Alltrack SE is one of those cars.
So, why did this happen? The Golf in question is not one of the fast ones, and it doesn’t feature delivery mileage, yet it commanded $24,750 on Bring A Trailer just this week. A five-year-old Golf on Bring A Trailer? What’s going on? See, when new supply of something dries up, used examples become more valuable, and that’s exactly what happened here.
Let’s hone in on specifics, starting with that Alltrack name. See, to create the Golf Alltrack, Volkswagen took a Golf wagon, ticked the box for all-wheel-drive, raised it up by six-tenths of an inch, and added some cladding. Think a two-thirds scale German Subaru Outback, and you’re on the right path. As of right now, there isn’t anything on the U.S. market that fits that description. Sure, we’re flush with subcompact crossovers, but compact station wagons? That’s a rare breed right there.
Next, there’s the way this particular Golf Alltrack was optioned. Sure, the DSG dual-clutch automatic gearbox was a fine choice, but whoever ordered this one new decided to be bold and go with the six-speed manual gearbox. Hard to imagine you could order a raised-up manual small wagon in America just five years ago, right?
Add in the wonderful Great Falls Green paint, desirable options like the panoramic sunroof, 18-inch alloy wheels, LED headlights, and push-to-start, and this Golf represents something with no clear replacement. For people who want a manual station wagon in America, this is the end of the line, the newest one can possibly go. Never mind that it has 49,000 miles on the clock, it has a clean Carfax and a mix of traits that’s simply rare.
Plus, because the Golf Alltrack is, well, a Golf, it’s a properly nice thing to drive. Sure, the shifter isn’t the most precise unit in the world, but the 1.8-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine has plenty of torque, the chassis tuning strikes a nice balance between comfort and fun, at least in the context of regular cars, and the all-wheel-drive system definitely helps on corner exit. Add it all together, and it’s easy to see why this five-year-old Golf costs more than a new Corolla. In fact, it’s par for the course, with six other Golf Alltracks selling on Bring A Trailer this year for anywhere from $19,500 to $38,250.
In fact, the Golf Alltrack can almost be seen as foreshadowing as the future for all manner of cars currently on the new market with no formula-matching successor in sight. It still depreciated, just slowly, and quickly became at least a moderately desirable daily driver for connoisseurs. With the internet’s unique way of driving hype and reaching a wide audience, don’t be surprised if clean, stock, well-kept, gently used M2s and CT5-V Blackwings and GR86s go the same way in a few years, depending on which part of the world you live in.
I guess the bottom line is that we’re in an era of massive change in the automotive industry, so don’t count on traditional depreciation to make your combustion-powered dream machines substantially cheaper. As every experience becomes collectable, the cycles of devaluation we’re used to may go the way of the dodo. On one hand, it sucks, because it keeps the cars we want out of reach of some. On the other, it could mean that some of these cars stay preserved. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
(Photo credits: Bring A Trailer)
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