Faults:

Constant Air Bag issues while the car was in warranty. Thankfully, it now seems to be fixed.

Glove box latch broke.

Center console latch broke.

Cabin light no longer works when front doors are opened. Will work when rear doors are opened. Hard to drive this way.

Mass air filter.

O2 filter.

Some other filter that cost about $350 to replace. I've gotten lost in all the filters!

Brakes light have burned out twice.

General Comments:

I absolutely love driving this car. It is super screaming fast and handles very well. The car is small, but packs a great deal of spunk.

I have just been getting more and more frustrated with all the repairs. People are critical of American cars sometimes, but I never had the problems with any those that I have had with this.

The 2 year/24K warranty is a joke. I guess that is the first tip when a company won't stand behind their car. Although their technicians frequently stand under my hood.

I owned a 1997 GLX before this one. I absolutely loved that car as well, but little things kept going wrong with it too. I bought the new one expecting it to be better.

Oh well.

Faults:

Rear brakes needed replacing at 40,000 miles. No indicator light came on, so I scored the rotors. Cost $450.

Replaced the oil pan at 27,000 miles because it had a crack in it. Had it done at an independent repair shop, so it was "only" $250.

Brake lights don't work. I'm going to try to fix this myself because I'm terrified to go to the dealer. I know it will be expensive, no matter what.

Yellow goo pours out the bottoms of the doors. The dealer says that's normal. I just scoop it off. Some day, it has to stop leaking, right?

CD changer skips. Keeping the back seat folded down so that cabin air can circulate into the trunk area seems to help. Also bringing the CD cartridge into the house at night helps.

Buttons on the front console stick, presumably because the last owner spilled something onto them from the cup holder location. I fixed this by cleaning between the buttons with an alcohol-soaked swab.

The dealer changed out my window regulators when I was having the brakes done, just as a precaution. I didn't notice anything wrong with them.

I had a valet key made and it was outrageously expensive. The key itself (a piece of plastic with a piece of metal sticking out of it) was $50. Then I had to bring it in to the dealer so they could match it to the anti-theft system. Another $50. So that's $100 for a spare key.

Although I really love the styling and the pep of this car, I probably wouldn't buy another one. It's just too expensive to maintain. Maybe I have very high expectations because of the experience with my Nissan pickup. I sold it at 90,000 miles and it still had original brakes, clutch, nothing had broken. I only replaced the tires at 50,000 miles. I sold it only because I was leaving the country for several years. When I came back to the US and was looking for a car, I chose the Jetta because I loved my friend's car. I also wanted something with ABS and airbags. I now think I could have bought a car that wasn't so expensive to repair, yet had all the wonderful features of the Jetta. I don't plan on getting rid of it, as nothing catastrophic has happened, but I am knocking on wood.

Faults:

The car operated well for nearly 10K miles, that must be good for a Volkswagen. The first thing to go wrong at 14,000 miles was a sensor for the water temp, good thing it was covered by the warranty. The $12 part added up to about $250 dollars with labour and new coolant etc.

Then the emissions sensors went off 2 times in 4 months. Most of that was still covered under the warranty. That would have been over 500 dollars if not under warranty.

Then at 32000 miles the rear brakes went bad and the rotors too. Seems high quality German engineering makes a very soft rotor that the brake pads wear out. There was never in sound to warn about bad brake pads. The only sound you get is metal on Metal the it is too late for the rotors too.

Then a retainer clip broke on the armrest. I was told I would need to leave it at the dealer for 1/2 a day. I purchased a clip for 3 dollars and replaced it in 34 seconds and that included the time I walked to the car.

General Comments:

The car has only been driven 33000 miles in 3 years, I don't think it should have had so many problems. I owned a Nissan Sentra before, not an expensive car, but it never had problems. Seems like Volkswagen feels they should charge a very high price for a sedan of that class. Yet, they don't feel compelled to use high quality components.