Unusually strong value retention through the 2020-2026 auction window

Standard (non-Spektrum) Mk7/7.5 Rs in this corpus sold roughly between $19,000 for thin-documentation or heavily modified cars and $35,000+ for low-mile examples, with a 2016 6MT bringing $33,000 in late 2023, less than $6k under its original MSRP after seven years. Commenters repeatedly marveled at the retention, contrasted it against equivalent GTIs trading far lower, and shared dealer lowball offers ($17-20k trade-in quotes against high-$20s auction results). …