All-new Jetta undercuts old model’s price
JIM KENZIE/FOR THE TORONTO STAR
With at least five trim levels, three engines and four greaboxes, the 2011 Jetta offers impressive variety.
SAN FRANCISCO—The 2011 Jetta compact sedan will be the first in a line of new vehicles that Volkswagen hopes will reconquer the world’s largest car market, North America.
Next year, a new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. will start building a mid-size sedan Passat replacement that will face Honda Accord and Toyota Camry head-on in the biggest car segment in the U.S.
But coming first, in September of this year, the Jetta will paint bull’s-eyes on such as Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Mazda3, Nissan Sentra and Hyundai Elantra, which occupy the sweet spot of the market in Canada.
The entry-level price will be $15,875 — not for a Brazilian-built previous-generation car like the recently-deceased City Jetta, but an all-new vehicle that is bigger, faster and more fuel-efficient than the outgoing model.
The current starter Jetta is priced at $22,175. Heck, I paid more than that $15,875 for a three-year-old Jetta wagon with 133,000 km on it a couple of years ago.
The new base Jetta does sacrifice some stuff — well, a lot of stuff — to make this price level.
But to compete with the Japanese and Koreans, Volkswagen has to play their game.
Sure, VW will still focus on the “German engineering” theme, and build on Jetta’s reputation as a higher-priced, classier car — which in a lot of ways, it still is.
For example, Electronic Stability Control, the most important safety feature since radial tires, is standard across the board, a full year before it becomes mandatory in Canada (some compact sedan competitors make you stretch to nearly 30 grand to get ESC).
Likewise standard are anti-lock brakes, side curtain air bags, and the vastly more important whiplash-reducing front head-restraints.
But, like most of its direct competitors, Jetta will not offer fully independent rear suspension, rear disc brakes or air conditioning at that price.
Some will say VW is cheapening the brand. John White, president and CEO of VW Group Canada, retorts that if that’s what it takes to get into the middle of the market, that’s what VW is going to do.
The new car will be built in Puebla, Mexico, on a new platform that is no longer shared with the Golf hatchback.
Continuing to defy logic, North American customers prefer sedans, especially at the lowest price levels. Come on people: same footprint, more car — why would you not want a hatchback?
But the customer is always right even when he’s wrong, so Jetta now slides in just below Golf in VW’s lineup.
The new car is 7.3 cm longer overall than before, all but 0.1 cm of that going into the wheelbase, yielding an additional 6.7 cm. of rear-seat legroom, which VW claims is now the largest in the segment.
Trunk space at 440 litres also leads the class, and a 60/40 split-folding rear seat back is standard.
The car is aimed primarily at North America, but will go to most European countries in limited quantities.
Interestingly, Europe-destined cars will get an all-independent rear suspension; they won’t settle for anything less and I guess if they’re going to go a buck-sixty on the autobahn, I can’t blame them.
That said, the semi-independent twist-beam, popularized on the original Golf (our Rabbit) and still used on lots of competitive cars, works pretty well.
The Jetta lineup is too complicated to go into in much detail here, with Trendline, Trendline +, Comfortline, Sportline and Highline trim levels, all with different amounts of kit. Notably, the latter two add rear disc brakes.
We will get three engines at launch: the ancient 115 hp 2.0-litre gasoline four, the 170-horse 2.5-litre gasoline five used in the Golf and current Jetta, and a 140-horse 2.0-litre turbodiesel (TDI), all of which get better fuel economy thanks to revised transmission ratios and to a weight decrease of about 70 kg, despite the increase in size.
VW expects the engine split to be 30/30/40, but I think as usual they are guessing low on diesel penetration. Who wouldn’t want highway fuel economy of 4.6 L/100 km, especially when you no longer sacrifice performance or much in the way of engine noise?
And, it’s the only engine available with a six-speed manual or VW’s brilliant six-speed DSG (Dual Shift Gearbox), which gives you the performance and economy of a manual with the comfort of an automatic.
(The other engines offer a five-speed stick or six-speed auto).
The downside of the diesel is that you can only get it starting at the Comfortline range, at $23,875 (add $1,400 for the DSG).
You can load a TDI up with Bluetooth, leather and satellite-navigation, which kicks that MSRP over 30 grand.
VW Canada’s John White expects only about 10 per cent of 2011 Jetta buyers will go for the entry-level car, about the same as the competitors’ bare-bones models.
The Trendline + adds air and remote power locks for an additional $1,400. Add another $1,400 for the autobox and I think that’s going to be the volume permutation.
Starting next year, the GLI will debut, with that European independent rear suspension and a 2.0-litre turbo engine. That should be fun — essentially a Golf GTI with a trunk.
A hybrid, combining electric power with VW’s fabulous 1.4-litre twin-charger TSI engine, comes along about a year after that.
The only cars available for us to test here in The Bay area of San Francisco were American-spec cars with the 2.5-litre engine and six-speed auto.
The U.S. uses different trim level designations; our tester was an SEL, which pretty much had everything on it.
Much was made about the car’s new styling. Walter de’Silva, VW’s talented head of design, waxed eloquent about various aspects of the car, calling it elegant and timeless.
Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Some even compared it to the Audi A4.
It is doubtless a handsome car, but, sorry guys, it reminded me most of the Ford Focus sedan.
Interior trim quality has long been a VW hallmark, and while the fit, finish and materials in the 2011 Jetta are very good, I don’t know that they’re as good as my 2003 Jetta TDI Wagon, nor are they that much superior to the Mazda3.
The extra room is immediately apparent, and welcome. The seats are comfortable and supportive, but this is the first VW I can remember that had a lever, not a more precise knurled knob, for backrest adjustment.
The rear doors open just about a full 90 degrees to ease access to the aft cabin.
The 2.5-litre engine is almost too abrupt at throttle tip-in; be careful pulling away from stops to avoid spilling your Fourbucks all over the centre console.
Performance is more than adequate, and the engine feels quiet and relaxed.
The transmission in our tester occasionally dealt a fairly significant thump in a throttle-induced downshift, but most of the time it worked transparently.
The manual override, as in most cars, is backwards: push forward for an upshift (when you accelerate, your body weight is being shifted rearward) and pull back to downshift (again, in opposition to how your body weight is being shifted). Every sequential manual gearbox in a race car works logically: back to upshift, forward to downshift. If you are using the manual override, surely better performance is what you’re after, so why wouldn’t you do it the way race cars do it?
I wasn’t able to determine at time of writing if our test car had the sport suspension, which is available on some trim levels. I hope it did, because the ride is probably going to be a bit harsh for most mainstream customers.
Handling is however precise and entertaining, and VW’s legendary liquid steering feel is as always, quite lovely.
The satellite-navigation — rare in this segment — comes in for special praise. It’s legible despite a smallish screen and intuitive to operate. The auto-zoom function while not unique works notably well here.
Easily the most irritating feature of the new Jetta — as in all VW products — is the damnable automatic locks. You want your doors locked? Push the button, fer cryin’ out loud.
Now, some people actually like this feature. They obviously have never taken their kids out on Halloween, picked up several friends at different places to go to dinner, or hopped out of the car to grab their camera or sports bag off the back seat.
A product planner for another car company once told me this is the most bi-polar of features: people either hate it or love it.
Surely then it should be user-programmable. But VW makes you pay your dealer about $70 to shut the bloody thing off, as we did with our Jetta.
The 2011 Jetta represents quite a departure for Volkswagen, essentially an admission that the company can no longer charge a premium for their cars. The Jetta is now fully competitive on price and features, and clearly leads in several important categories, including safety, driving dynamics, space and surface finish.
VW’s quality rankings in such as J.D. Power and Consumers Reports have not been stellar, although our family Jetta has been pretty good. Improvements by a carmaker also take a while to work their way through these systems because the older cars are still included in some of the surveys.
VW is countering this with a strong four-year/80,000 km basic warranty and 12-year rustproof warranty on the galvanized steel body.
VW Canada expects to sell some 24,000 2011 Jettas, substantially more than the 16,000-odd they did last year, but not far off the peak of 22,000 a few years back.
With more size, features and value, the 2011 Jetta should have the Japanese and Koreans looking over their shoulders.
Travel was provided freelance auto reviewer Jim Kenzie by the automaker.
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