The difference between “bold” and “foolhardy” is not always apparent at first glance. While I was driving the GLI around Volkswagen’s Virginia test loop (insert standard narrative devices here: 11/10ths, drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man, et cetera) I saw a tall, lithe young woman by the side of the road. She was holding a dog and chatting with a rather fearsome-looking fellow in an old Toyota truck. Without thinking too much, I whipped the Jetta around at the next driveway and returned to the couple. Flashing my hotel room card very quickly and identifying myself as “Jonny Lieberman of
At the time, however, there was a very real chance that the fellow in the Toyota would simply step out and maul me like a crazed bear working its way through a deer carcass. I never found out what his relationship to the young woman was — husband? father? cello teacher? dog trainer? — but he didn’t care for me
The same fine line applies to “forthright” and “contrarian”. After driving the Beetle Turbo, Golf GTI, I steered two examples of Volkswagen’s new Jetta GLI down the same route. Why
Will you, the reader, be as easily convinced as I was?
Once each year, the Italian fashion house of Ermenegildo Zegna holds a competition for Australian sheep. The award-winning sheep are shorn and their wool becomes Zegna’s “Trofeo” fabric. Rare, expensive, and possessed of an ethereal tactile quality, Trofeo is a true delight to touch and wear. As I dragged my aging carcass under the Jetta to photograph the revised rear suspension, grinding a one-of-a-kind green plaid Trofeo sportcoat into the hot Virginia tarmac, I wondered why I was the only person I’d seen do this all day. After all the pissing and moaning about the base Jetta’s twist-beam rear suspension, surely
Why waste time looking at suspension when we can offer caustic opinions on the revised interior? Speaking personally, I couldn’t tell much difference between this and the GTI. Don’t take my word for it, however, since not even the worst Volkswagen dealer in the world (an honor I would personally give to Checkered Flag VW in Virginia, the place which apparently ran a Brillo pad over my 2006 Phaeton and curbed the wheels before delivering it to me) is going to keep you from sitting in one. Check it out yourself. As in the GTI, the controls are mostly logical and accessible. It seems nice enough, particularly for the money. Speaking of: Twenty-five grand will get you all the GLI you need.
The GLI’s mission, stated or unstated, has always been “provide Americans with the most affordable sporting German (or German-brand) sedan available” and the styling continues to reflect this. The changes are just enough to let people who care about this sort of thing know that you’re driving the sporty Jetta and not the base model.
Just how sporty is it? If you read my GTI review yesterday, you know that the GLI’s hatchback cousin is quite sporty indeed, and deserving of superlatives. It seemed like it would be a tough contender to beat on the backroads — and yet the GLI manages to do exactly that. How? Why?
We’ll start with the one real black mark on the GLI’s report card (other than the ones Consumer Reports will give it, wink, wink): the button to disable traction control has disappeared. How VW can justify letting Phaeton owners turn DSC off but prevent GLI drivers from doing so is beyond me. This is something the company needs to fix. It’s not that the car needs to have DSC disabled in order to make good time down a backroad. That’s not the case at all. Rather, it’s the simple fact that over the course of a car’s lifetime, there will be times when it’s best to turn a brake-based traction-control system off. Deep snow, nursing a car with a frozen brake caliper or worn-out pads to a service station, and so on. There’s no reason not to have the option available. It’s a fifty-cent button.
Enough griping. I come to praise the GLI, not bury it. Start with the suspension. It’s measurably softer than that of the GTI, but the same excellence in damping is there. If anything, the GLI was even
Hear me now and believe me later: you
Some TTAC readers theorized that the GLI would be lighter than the GTI. VW’s own figures disagree, placing the GLI a few pounds above the four-door GTI and therefore making it heavier than both GTI bodies and the Beetle. (The Golf R is, of course, heaviest of all.) Nor is this shell appreciably stiffer than the GTI. Yes, the GLI is easier to place on the road than the Golfs are, but I would put that down to the intersection of steering geometry, suspension geometry, and wheelbase.
Remember how, in the Beetle test, I complained that the Beetle has the shortest wheelbase and
Driving the manual-transmission Jetta after the DSG model removed my fears that I’d somehow accidentally gotten Puebla’s Best GLI Ever the first time. If anything, the manual car was even
This is a good car, and although we live in an era of good cars, this one deserves your attention and consideration. As much as I enjoyed the GTI, I simply enjoyed the GLI more. It has nothing to do with the trunk, or the value, or the interior quality, or any of the other canards raised when we discuss the current-generation Jetta. This very subjective test boils to down the fact that, had VW given me time to drive the route yet again, I would have chosen another GLI over another GTI. It’s a greater pleasure to drive, and since driving pleasure is the whole reason to spend the extra money for the red-trim Volkswagens, I think it’s the winner. If that seems contrarian, I apologize. It’s like to think that it’s “forthright”, or perhaps even that most reassuring of words: “truthful”.
