By AARON COLE
Managing Editor, MediaOne of Utah
News from Germany this week underscores the aim of the people’s motorcar company.
Guten tag, Toyota.
Rumors that Volkswagen is looking to unseat Toyota as the world’s largest automaker were propelled Tuesday when it was announced the little motorcar company from Germany was making a bid at Fiat-owned Alfa Romeo, and aiming to crank up the little Milan-based automaker up to 500,000 cars per year. If you are counting — or you consistently read car trade magazines — that’s a five-fold increase for Alfa. And combined with the folks from Wolfsburg, that’s an extraordinary push to make VW the biggest, baddest motorwerks maker in the world.It’s also one big strudel to swallow.
But VW’s intentions are true, and one need look no further than the 2011 VW Jetta as proof.
Until now, the Jetta has competed with the Japanese blockbusters of the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Mazda3 in size only. The Jetta carried the same footprint as the sporty, smaller-sized offerings from Asia, but left a bigger hole in the wallet. This year, with the intention of moving more sheet metal off dealer lots in 2011, VW is equipping the Jetta with a price tag to compete.
Starting at $15,995, the 2011 Jetta will sail onto lots like a market-bound panzer headed toward the economy class from Germany with love. That’s a $2,000 drop over last year’s entry price and a whole lot of European engineering for a little price.
What is sacrificed over previous years, according to VW, is little. Instead of 148 different flavors of the Jetta, consumers will choose from 18. Although, by VW’s own admission, the entry-level model of the Jetta, the S model, loses ground to the Civic in categories like engine performance — the Jetta comes standard with a 115-horsepower engine, while the Civic DX comes with 140 ponies — start tacking on the options and the Jetta quickly outpaces arguably the world’s most popular economy car.
That adds up to a lot of entry-class appeal for the Jetta, which has been priced slightly above the economy class competition for the sole reason that VW is based in Europe — not Japan. But what about the buyers who liked that? What about the 1960s-era VW that was a little bit off the beaten path? Will they like the new Jetta?
It’s hard to say, but there’s a lot to like here.
This year the Jetta is a little bit longer, 2.9 inches, and a little bit lighter, 300 lbs. of shed weight. That translates into a bigger-body Jetta that feels remarkably like it was built for wide-body Americans, 2.3 kinder per family and space for our ever-increasing need for storage room. Trunk space too has been upgraded to near cavernous in 2011, room enough for two sets of golf clubs and an epic run to Costco — standard American fare.
Included among the bigger body and cargo capacity is a plainer style that resonates more among its newfound class than previous years.
The 2011 Jetta seems more at home as a longtime purchase, as previous years’ scooping hood and grille combinations have been toned down for a more pedestrian first impression; it has a split grille and black trim, which gives the 2011 Jetta more shelf life on the road. (Economy car buyers tend to keep their cars longer.) In the rear, the Jetta’s lamps look closer to an Audi than last year’s VW and it’s no shock — VW owns Audi too.
Instead, VW took the scalpel to powertrain and suspension options, dancing dangerously close to killing the autobahn-ready feel of previous years.
My first car out of high school was a new Honda Civic, which was half-begrudgingly purchased for me after comparing it to a used VW Jetta. The Jetta, I contended was a little more fun to drive and a more stylistically pleasing. My dad, who wrote the check and therefore asserted executive power, was looking for what he said was reliable and safe — not something that looked good wrapped around a tree.
Volkswagen swapped a rear torsion beam in for 2011 instead of fully independent coils fitted on the 2010 models to save money. Typically, when such a move is made, the back end of turns to schnitzel in the corners. Under most driving conditions (read: nearly all that normal daily Jetta drivers ask) the difference is negligible and the 2011 Jetta retains much of the road-driver connection that made previous models fun to drive. Volkswagen reps also say the company saved money buy sourcing parts from different vendors, allowing them to build the Jetta for less money — also probably true, but a bit of a boring detail.
Despite all that, contrary to other early reviews of the Jetta, VW actually found a way to put a little more schnapps into the 2011 Jetta than in previous years.
Our test model, the SEL, raced up to 60 mph in around 8 seconds and cornered well enough to turn our legs into pretzels.
So is a less expensive 2011 Jetta more of a Fraulein than the Teutonic dynamo of previous years? Nein.
VW clearly sprechens sie Englisch this year better in order to take over the top spot from Toyota — starting with the Jetta.
Aaron Cole is a syndicated auto columnist and managing editor of MediaOne of Utah, and has driven hundreds of new cars — but only briefly. By most accounts he is wrong and has proudly been banned on Internet message boards. Send complaints, compliments or supplemental income to aaron.m.cole@gmail.com
