I mostly bought the car for its looks, interior quality, sexy 5 cylinder sound and refined driving dynamics. I have removed rear seats, spare, tools, trunk liner, cover and my car weighs 2700 with 1 gallon of gas, intake, straight through magnaflow, mount, dg springs, eibach rear swaybar. With that I am dead even with my bosses 2006 gli mt and the numbers can prove that I would be. I put down 163whp on a dyno dynamics which is 16.56lbs per hp. Gli from that year is 185-195whp. gli is 3353 in weight which is 17.64lb per hp plus my boss is pretty big and im a skinny little kid. I went to the scale with my friends 09 wrx and his was 3180lbs which is accurate so 2700 is no bs. I would still get eaten though if the gti/gli owner spent 500$ on a tune however. Thats why my next car is gonna be a gti but I got my golf for another 5 years. Who knows what vw will have then.
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2006-volkswagen-jetta-gli-road-test
Note I timed a 0-60 of 6.9 in my car and the test for the gli was a 7.1 I have a vid of my 0-60 if you want that