Buying one of these is really a no brainer.

First, let me mention that if you are not a member of Costco, you should try to join one before you purchase any new car. They have an Auto Purchase program with a network of dealers that agree to only charge a hundred to two hundred dollars over their cost. This takes the haggling and pressure out of the deal and really, this gives you a deal you won't be able to find anywhere else. Now on to the car.

First, let me say it's been the most fun car I've ever had, it's quick and fast, handles like a hot knife carving through butter. I got the 1.8 turbo version that pushes 155 horsepower, and with the engine being much lighter than the VR6 model (174 horsepower), the car handles much more nimbly. Two striking things about the car I noticed immediately are the extremely quiet interior and the spaceaged looking dash (it's a bright blue and red tint, you have to see it to understand). You really should try to test drive this car at night, it looks and sounds so cool. And after you've had a chance to actually drive it, you'll notice the ride is so solid for a "small" car. At almost 3 thousand pounds gross weight for what appears to be a small car, it just cuts through the air; that sway you get from the wind in other small cars just is not there in the Jetta. I heard this car nicknamed the poor man's BMW. I gotta say, as cheesy as that sounds, it really is true. I've never driven a BMW, but I've had people ride in my Jetta that own BMWs and they immediately notice similarities in design and quality of construction. To further solidify my point about the quality of the construction of this car, let me tell you that I drive the car "HARD". I drive way too fast most of the time, accelerate and brake abrubtly, take the turns hard, etc. I've been driving the car this way since I bought it October of 2000, and have about 13,500 miles on it now (Nov 16, 2001). The car has ZERO rattles, not one interior sound. (On a side note though, the turbo of the engine makes this awesome humming sound when it kicks in, from the air being pushed through the engine, it's the best sounding engine of any car I've driven before, if that's important to you.) I've had other cars that had some kind of rattle just a few weeks after being with me, i.e. Honda Civic, Acura Integra. I guess if you haven't figured it out yet, I do love this car.

But the car is not perfect. There are two aspects of my particular model that are not the greatest, both of which I could foresee ahead of time, but only one I would change if I could do it all over again. The first is that there is almost NO legroom in the backseat. The headroom is decent, but only a small kid (my kid is 6) can sit in the back seat comfortably. If you want the legroom then you'll need to spend an extra 4 thousand or so and get the Passat. The other negative, the aspect I would change, is the color of the interior. They offer 3 color options for the interior, beige, gray, and black. For me, the beige with the midnight blue exterior I chose didn't sound like a good combination. The black sounded like it would be too hot in the summer, so I chose the gray interior. The gray as it turns out is very pretty, but is quite easy to get stained, especially on the back of the front seats if you have kids rubbing their feet against it. The black is really more of a charcoal gray and if I were to do it all over again, I would opt for the "black", even though I've heard it shows up lint much more easily than the gray.

Really, though, adding up ALL the positive aspects of this car, with the couple of negatives, you'll quickly realize that if you are in the market for one of the smaller sedans, this really is the one to get. For the money you will pay (especially if you go through Costco), you can't find a better car, IMHO.

Hope this helped. Now go buy yourself one.