2001 Volkswagen Jetta GLS 2.0 from North America
Summary:
Great car!!!
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.
Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Yes
Review Date: 29th April, 2009