It’s all downhill for the Jetta
LONDON, U.K.— I suppose I ought to come clean. The cars I write about on these pages are sometimes nothing like the cars you can actually buy.
Every car company runs a fleet of press demonstrators, which motoring journalists can borrow for a day or a week. We imagine, of course, that the cars on these fleets are plucked at random from the production lines, in the same way a famous restaurant reviewer expects that the food she’s eating is exactly the same as the food everyone else is eating.
But I fear that, sometimes, they are not.
Many years ago, when cars were judged only on acceleration times, Austin Rover made all sorts of wild claims about how its new Maestro turbo could get from a standstill to 60 miles an hour in six seconds. And indeed, the press-fleet cars supplied for testing could do just that.
But only once. Because then they’d blow up, causing everyone to wonder if the waste gate valves hadn’t been welded slightly shut.
There were also tales about car makers stripping down cars that would be going to the press, and then rebuilding them, very carefully and at huge expense, by hand.
But even if the car supplied for testing really does come from the production line, the experience is still a bit skewed. For instance, most press-fleet managers will ensure that every demonstrator is fitted with every single optional extra. They will argue that this gives the reviewer a chance to sample all that’s available.
Yes. But a layer of exciting buttons and knobs can also mask the dreariness of the product underneath. In the same way as a spicy sauce masks the fact that the curry you’ve ordered is full of dead cats.
So, in short, I spend half my life driving around in a $40,000 car that’s been hand built at a cost of $400,000 and has been supplied with free fuel, free insurance and a range of optional extras that are worth twice what most people would pay for the entire car.
Not this week, though, because Volkswagen supplied a new Jetta in what can only be described as rental-car spec. I assumed that this was because the company was so proud of the actual car, it didn’t want to spoil the experience with lots of unnecessary electronic or cosmetic flimflam.
I was wrong. Because this is the dreariest, most depressing car ever made in all of human history.
I am not saying this because it is an ordinary car of a type people buy. I am saying this because it really is the four-wheeled equivalent of drizzle.
In front of the gear shift are five switches, and in a standard car all of them are blanked off with plastic shrouds — little reminders that you didn’t work hard enough at school and that life’s not going as well as you’d hoped. If only you’d clinched that last deal, you could have purchased the parking sensor package. Then you’d have only four blanked-off buttons.
It’s much the same story with the central control system. Push the button marked “Media” and a message flashes up saying, “No medium found.” This is another gentle dig, another reminder that you couldn’t afford to fit an ipod connection. That your whole life is going down the khazi.
The suspension is tuned to work only on a billiard table
So you push the button marked “Nav” and you get another baleful message saying that no navigation disc has been found. You couldn’t afford it, could you? You only got three Bs and the U of T said no. You ended up at a community college and your life’s gone downhill from there. It must have done, for you to have ended up in a Jetta. As we know, it’s a Golf with a trunk instead of a hatchback and what’s the point of that, exactly? There was a time when a sedan was perceived to be more upmarket than a hatch. There are also places in the world, in Africa mainly, where a sedan marks you out as someone special. But here? Now? No. We have come to realize that a sedan is just a hatchback that’s less practical and more boring to behold. The Jetta is extremely boring to look at. It’s boring to think about. This is the sort of car you would buy not realizing that you already had one. It is catastrophically dull. It is not, however, dull or boring to drive. No. It is absolutely awful. First of all there’s the suspension, which is plainly tuned to work only on a billiard table. On a road, it transmits news of every crease, ripple and pebble directly to your spine and, to make matters worse, the seats appear to have been fashioned from ebony. They are rock hard. The backrest, which is even less forgiving than the squab, seems to have just two positions. Bolt upright and fully reclined. Only once can I remember ever being so uncomfortable and that’s when a doctor was examining a part of me with what felt like the blunt end of a road cone. Then there’s the air-conditioning. Or, rather, there isn’t. VW calls it semi-automatic air-con, and I’m sorry but there’s no such thing. It doesn’t work. And as for the trip computer, it told me about oil temperature, which isn’t interesting, or it was a compass. And that’s not interesting either.
So what of the engine? Well, in Canada you’ve a choice of a 2.0litre or 2.5-litre gas engine, or a 2.0 turbo diesel.
I opted for the diesel, which, by diesel standards anyway, was reasonably quiet and refined. It was also reasonably powerful, clean and economical.
I must be similarly kind about the quality. The interior does appear to be well screwed together, but then the Jetta is made in Mexico, and Mexico, as I have recently learned, is a byword for industrious attention to detail.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of even three people who would be happy to live for more than a few seconds with this hateful, dreary, badly equipped, uncomfortable, forgettable piece of motoringinduced euthanasia.
Better alternatives include the Golf, the Passat, every other car ever made, walking, hopping and being stabbed. Jeremy Clarkson is the host of Top Gear, seen daily on BBC Canada. wheels@thestar.ca