Itching to trade in my gti. What should I get next?

[jorlay]

As a typical car enthusiast, the itch to get myself into another car is hitting me hard.
I'll blame it on a combination of laziness and growing up I suppose. There's absolutely nothing wrong with my gti. It's still an absolute blast to drive.

However, life happens; the wife and I are planning to have kids next year. After driving lowered cars for 10 years, I'm starting to get a LITTLE bit tired of it...especially during the winter. Or perhaps I'm getting really spoiled driving the wife's QX50. It feels great not having to cringe scraping the underbody during winter, being able to plow through speed bump etc.

At the same time, the wife absolutely refuses to drive my car ever since she curbed two of my wheels.
Long story short, I'm toying with the idea of trading in the gti for something a little more mature and with more space.

1) Has anyone got their gti appraised recently and remember the trade in value? Canadian Black book says 17k - 19k but that number seems very inflated. I have a 2013 DSG fully loaded with just under 100k km on it right now.
2) If I'm willing to dish out 25k-30k on top of the trade in, what should I consider? I'm looking at used 340i, b8.5 S4, C400/C450 or just go full family oriented and go for an SQ5.
I realize this is a pretty open ended discussion and some of the vehicles I've listed will start fires but I'm just genuinely lost. LOL growing up and finding something to replace the GTI is pretty hard.

[BlueE30]

My vote, hands down is a B8.5 S4 if you can find a good, low mileage 6 spd manual.

Fantastic engine, maybe the best Audi has ever made, seem to be a very reliable car and a stage 1 tune and you're set. Mercedes are boring, Bimmer's are shit reliability, even the new ones. Good buddy is a BMW mechanic, the horror story's from him make me never want to own a newer BMW.

S4! SQ5 is a great too, similar thing just more family orientated.

[Clownish]

A good condition GTI will still trade in for 13-14k btw. Private sales is a little more


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[forwardlean]

I haven't traded in my GTI. I've kicked tires on a few cars recently, but I'm just not quite done with my car yet.

Take a look at the new A4 All Road. They finally put a DSG in this and it's very nice. The A5 Sportback I test drove also got high marks. The auto driving feature is cool. S3 is cool as well, but less room than the GTI. Honestly, the GTI is still great.

Our family wagon is the BMW X3 28d with the M package. It's VERY nice in the looks and driving department. The suspension is perfect for the type of car. The mileage (being diesel) is amazing. Comically amazing. Did a road trip to the US a few times this year with it...it's near 900km on a $70 fill. My wife commutes with it in stop and go and she's averaging 7L/100km. NOW...we're leasing it. We aint buying this thing. It's like driving a Ming vase of electronics. Weird gremlins all over the place. Notifications of turn signal malfunctions (which turn out to be fine), parking sensor malfunctions randomly. I also noticed the other week when it was ice cold, there's no dipstick! We have this fully covered for the lease, but I don't think we'll be buying it.