I've got a mk5 golf gt tdi as my family car, it's fantastic and it's only the second non jap car i've owned. Not saying it sets my pants on fire but it does pretty well for what it is and far from boring. The other being a Clio 197 which was the best fwd car i've ever driven and would run rings around every other car i've owned apart from the gt4. Yeh it was made from tin foil and fag packets i will admit that but the handling and brakes were amazing for a stock car. At the end of the day i love my Starlet and 90% of old jap cars but having no eardrums left and possibly needing a new spine does wear thin after a while. But that's probably our fault as we love to modify things, left standard a lot of them are pretty civilised but slow by todays standards. As for the hot Audis can people seriously say they're boring? So an RS3 is boring? I'm not going to go through them all but come on not all new cars German or otherwise are boring they're just different.