2022 Volkswagen Jetta GLI: Faster than a speeding A3
The Audi A3, maligned by some as looking “just like a Jetta,” actually arrives at 60 mph slightly more slowly than the Jetta GLI. The VW also beats it on fuel economy, but in one area, the A3 wins.
2022 Volkswagen Jetta GLI: Audi fun, VW price?
Price: $33,780 as tested. Red paint, $395; GLI Black Package uglies up the wheels and trim for $595.
Conventional wisdom: Car and Driver likes that it’s “an affordable car that’s great fun to drive, unexpectedly practical for a compact sedan, desirable and upscale standard features,” but not the “cabin marred by some unpleasant materials, styling won’t excite everyone, automatic can hesitate to downshift.”
Marketer’s pitch: “Sophisticated style meets heart-racing power.”
Reality: The style might be questionable, but the power is not.
A bargain A3/S3: So I noted at the end of last week’s Audi S3 review how it does resemble the Jetta, a point of contention at family dinners for a long while now. Then I remembered, “Hey, I drove a hot-rod Jetta recently. How does it compare?”
What’s new: The Jetta GLI gets some styling updates (along with sibling Jetta), but it keeps the 2.0-liter four that powered it before.
Up to speed: The Jetta GLI definitely gets occupants to 60 mph in a hurry. The engine creates 228 horsepower and motors the vehicle to the six 10s mark in 6.1 seconds, according to Car and Driver. And that’s 0.2 seconds faster than the A3. (It doesn’t hold a candle to the S3′s 4.3 seconds, though.)
Shifty: The shifter for the 7-speed automatic follows the usual Volkswagen pattern, with Drive and Sport on a toggle and shift mode off to the right side.
At first, I thought this was all the choice there was, as was the case in Volkswagens of yore, but these days, a button also allows switching between Eco, Normal, Sport, and Custom modes.
Sport mode does allow the sedan to capture every available unit of work from under the hood, but in all modes there remains a moment’s hesitation from a standing start. It becomes less noticeable in Sport mode but it’s just always there, especially if you’re stopping for a red light and, just as you hit a few miles per hour, it’s suddenly green. Getting back to “go” takes a lot of shifting decisions from the computer.
A 6-speed manual is standard, and I’d love to have tried it.
On the road: Take the GLI out on the curves and you’ll quickly forget any hesitation issues. Do you ever have to slow down for a curve? I’m not sure you do, at least within the somewhat sane limits that Mr. Driver’s Seat drives.
Out on the highways as well, the Jetta outperforms most of its Volkswagenly compadres, providing a smooth ride over bumps, potholes, and road seams even in Sport mode. Try that in your GTI. Ouch.
Driver’s Seat: Another delightful difference between the GLI and its stablemates is the seating. Most sporty Volkswagen seats make me whine from their stiffness, but it took until Day 6 when I started compiling notes about that car to realize that I was never bothered.
Volkswagen continues to offer a handsome dashboard and nice gauges with crisp fonts, although the choices are becoming cluttered as they grow and grow. The black dashboard and silver trim remain basic and utilitarian but not ugly.
Friends and stuff: The Jetta has long had a reputation for plenty of backseat space, and the 2022 GLI keeps up that tradition. The corner seats have plenty of room, although the middle suffers from a seriously tall floor hump and intrusive front-seat console.
The seat itself is comfortable.
Cargo space is a healthy 14.1 cubic feet, and the rear seat folds down to create an ample cargo area.
Play some tunes: I almost thought I was going to like the sounds from the Beats by Dr. Dre stereo system. It nailed my favorite worst-produced song, but as I cycled through more favorite tunes over the week, I found the system needed lots of adjustment from song to song, and some never sounded quite right — a lot of tinniness overlaid with smash bass. I’d call it a B-.
Operation of the system remains fairly simple, with dials for volume and tuning, buttons for some functions, and a 10-inch touchscreen that’s large and in charge, although fine-tuning the sound involves two-step graphic bars in the touchscreen that are a crash waiting to happen.
Further, as in many Volkswagens I’ve endured, the Bluetooth connection seemed unstable and needed plenty of resetting.
Keeping warm and cool: Volkswagen stays with its three dials — temperature, fan speed, and location — and it just works without a glance.
Fuel economy: I averaged about 32 mpg in a wide range of road types with plenty of foot stomping, almost 10% higher than the A3 and almost 15% higher than the S3.
Where it’s built: Puebla, Mexico
How it’s built: Consumer Reports does not have a separate rating for the GLI, but it predicts the Jetta reliability to be a 3 out of 5, which is on the high side over the last 10 years of Jetta ratings. This matched the A3/S3 rating, as well.
In the end: The Jetta GLI does almost everything the Audi A3 does, and at a bargain price — $11,000 less than the A3 tested. And it even runs rings around some other performance VWs. But I already miss the Audi stereo.