Faults:

You need to step on the brake pedal in order to move the transmission from park to drive. I have had a couple of instances where I was not able to get the car in drive. I took the issue to the dealer and was told that this was a recall item, I was not charged anything.

Regular maintenance, oil changes, air filter, fuel filter, spark plugs, spark plug wires, etc…

General Comments:

My wife bought this car in 2002 when it had 20K miles on it. We recently got her a new vehicle and I took this car over as a daily driver as there was no need to get rid of it. I have now made my VW GTI my secondary (weekend) vehicle.

It gets decent gas mileage - I am averaging 28 per tank with equal time spent city and highway driving.

It seats four adults comfortably with enough cargo room to bring 4 people to the beach for a long weekend. I can comfortably cruise on the interstate, again with 4 people and a trunk full of gear, at 80 miles an hour with no worries or shaking and rattling.

I have personally performed all of the maintenance on the car following the service manual to the letter. Again, no issues with the exception of the recall item. I recently rolled into 160,000 miles and the engine and transmission are timed like a Swiss clock (a better analogy would be the car runs like it was engineered by Germans).

If I were to be critical about any aspects of this vehicle, I would have liked that it come from the factory with a little more power. Also, the seats are hard to keep clean because of the material used (non leather in my car).

If you want a car that you can abuse and forget about it in a few years, this is probably not the car for you. You will probably want to get a Honda or Toyota that will get 150K miles with no maintenance at all. If you don’t mind lifting the hood or getting on a creeper, I don’t see why you cannot get 300K out of the engine and transmission. Very well built auto.

Faults:

When I bought the Jetta, it ran great. Well it had 128,500 miles on it when I bought it from a used car dealership.

Four days after I had it, my son and I were on our way home when we heard a whistling noise. The next thing I know is that we are broke down in a church parking lot, in the handicapped spaces, on a Sunday. I had it towed to my Ex's house and he looked at it because he is a mechanic and said that my timing belt had shredded. When this happened it broke the tension and the belt flew up into the valves. I called the guy I bought it from and he fixed it for me. He had to replace the engine. Bad for me, I already bought the timing belt and tension for it. The new engine had 78,000 miles on it when I got my car back.

I have put almost 20k miles on it in less than a year now. I have had the oil changed 3 times since I got it. The only problems I have had constantly is that my oil light doesn't come on when the oil is low, and my sensor on the brakes broke lose; don't worry, you get a new sensor when you replace the brakes, I got that fixed. I am still trying to figure out why the oil light doesn't come on, but I am getting ready to just give up.

I am however getting ready to have new tires put on my car and replace the timing belt, water pump, and the tension in about two months.

General Comments:

Handles great.

Not much rear seat space.