What follows is the truth of ownership - not a bunch of whimsy.
Who are you? I am a M.E and parts, tooling and process designer and quality engineer who has worked for Bell Labs, AT&T and in partnership with BOSCH, Tesla and GM and Sumitomo in and advanced materials and parts development.
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I have a leased 2019 S Jetta with 6m.
My overall impression is the car is a cheap piece of junk.
Most Impressive is the head unit radio and body and systems software, its genius! but hardware is not good. Radio sound quality is poor to fair, though the tuner is relatively sensitive with good rejection.
Car wont hold an alignment, steering is poor, the ride is underdamped and bottoms out even on the Interstate - full float and 4 corner crash - due to short travel. The EPS is completely devoid of feel, way over-boosted and generally abysmal.
In the rain, if you spin the tires when the boost comes on in first gear, you will get horrendous, axle snapping and banging wheel hop and axle tramp. I've worried I had broken some thing - even getting out of the gas instantly.This also happens in snow on hills just trying to make slow progress.
The Transaxle is noisy with gear and engine racket bleedthough to the cabin; the clutch is clunking on takeup.
First is geared too low and second is two tall making 15MPH corners in 2nd an impossibility. 6th gear is a over 65 MPH affair
Interior materials - though a nice, crisp and pleasing contemporary design overall; are cheap plastic and rubber. Check out the clamshell rubbermaid interior door handles. The control stalks seem like they would shatter and snap off with little force.
The Hillholder system is dangerously intrusive and has caused stalling when trying to merge into traffic from a side road.by keeping the brakes applied 1-2 seconds after you engage the clutch. AFAIK it is not defeatable.
The hill holder is absolutely criminal if you are trying to make it up a snow packed hill in the Winter, and you start slipping backward. A clutch IN and STEER move will lock the brakes, slide you backward with no control, and put you in a ditch or worse. A
Headlight coverage fair at best, reversing camera is poor and gets occluded daily.,
Side traffic warning is good.
Seats are OK for a couple hours, seating position generally fairly comfortable
Big issue is with this new VAG MQB unibody platform - which appears really rushed to market, or not really suitable for thsi bodystyle - more compact SUV focused.
Rear seating area is not as capacious as you might expect.
On the Jetta, the front cowl is very high, making for a short windscreen and over too small and narrow a windshield.
Rear trunk and package shelf is very high making for absolutely NO rearward visibility.
Speaking of the trunk. Its huge but you get NO jack or spare tire just a fix a flat can of slime and a tire pump.
And this is with Passenger Touring tires - not UHP Summer tire
Body water management is a complete fail in the trunk lid gasket well. - this area holds water and debris by quart and will even freeze up solid.
Rear doors also have held pints of water in the gasket area and have completely frozen up during cool down after evening rain.
Then there is no hand brake - just and electric parking brake. A MUST for performance FWD driving.
Brakes are overbooosted but have excellent bite and are good in general - I have not pushed them hard enough to induce fade - but i have not tried.
Yes the 1.4t in the base Jetta is pretty quick, and the 2.0 GLI BLAZINGLY quick. As I stated before the GLI has the same acceleration and 1/4 mile trap speed as a then NEW late 60's Shelby GT500 428 Cobra Jet.
But I don't think its worth the other troubles. I barely use all of the power of the1.4t and I'm a very hard and fast driver.
