Originally Posted by
BarracksSi
FWIW, you couldn't give me a Jetta, even if it got great mileage. The practical-minded people looking in the used car market look really hard at a car's reputation for reliability, and at least through the first half of this decade, VW's rep has been awful. One of my neighbors was all too happy to finally get rid of his Jetta because of all the problems he had with it.
Interesting, this one is a 2006 and I haven't had to do anything to except put tires on it and change the oil. The car I had prior to this one was a 1999 Jetta and I never had to do anything to it either, except change the oil, the tires and since it had 70K miles I changed the brake pads once. I know another person with one and he had the alternator go out and that was quite pricey but he still drives it today... Perhaps I have been lucky but my experience with Jettas has been nothing but good (Except that I don't ever drive it anymore). My 81 Vanagon is the same way, I did have to replace things like shocks and cables and what not but never anything major...
And the ratings on it are really not so bad (9.3/10):
http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/ov...en&model=Jetta
I will grant you the body style before this one did not get nearly as good of ratings as the current model/body style.