Used Volkswagen Up GTI cars for sale

Q: How much is road tax for a Volkswagen Up GTI?

Car tax , or Vehicle excise duty (VED), for the Volkswagen Up GTI costs £155 per year.

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Used Volkswagen Up GTI pros and cons

+ Fun to drive

+ Great around town

+ Surprisingly spacious

- Pretty noisy at motorway speeds

- Infotainment smartphone app is fiddly

- Only a four-seater

Is a used Volkswagen Up GTI a good car?

Don’t be fooled by its dinky dimensions, the Volkswagen Up GTI is a really fun car to drive. It might not be much bigger than a shoebox but thanks to its more powerful engine and sporty suspension setup, you can hurtle down a twisty road more quickly than you might expect.

Exterior changes include GTI badges, red stripes on the grille and boot and smart 17-inch alloy wheels, while inside you get Golf GTI-inspired tartan cloth seats and splashes of red to give it an extra sporty feel. There’s a small screen for the air conditioning and a few other functions, but stuff like your trip data can be displayed on your phone through an app and held on the dashboard in a cradle.

There’s a three- and five-door option, with the latter better for those who regularly carry passengers. Once back there there’s not a huge amount of space, but because there’s no middle seat shoulder room is decent. Unless you’re friend number five. Then you’re walking.

Its 113hp three-cylinder petrol engine might not sound that impressive, but its surprisingly sprightly, getting up to speed quickly and not feeling too strained on the motorway. Sitting at 70mph isn’t too relaxing, though, because it’s pretty noisy.

Find a back road and you’ll probably forget about that, because the Up GTI is sharp and responsive in corners, and is sure to put a smile on your face.

What to look for when buying a second hand Volkswagen Up GTI

Being the most affordable hot hatch when it went on sale in 2017 (and up until it was taken off sale in 2023) meant it had quite a young buying demographic, and perhaps linked to this fact, many Up GTIs have been modified. Don’t expect crazy performance, but 150hp is fairly common and quite a lot in a car this size.

Be sure to ask the owner about any modifications and try to stick to cars that have been modified at professional shops where you can verify they’ve been properly put together. Bodged upgrades could cause a world of frustration in what should be an easy, cheap car to live with.

Reliability appears to be excellent with little in the way of recurring problems mentioned by owners, so just keep an eye out for the usual used car buying recommendations. That means a car with a long manufacturer service history, no signs of mismatched panels that could be hiding crash damage, and no unusual knocks and rattles while on the test drive.