(b.) Some TV show which I have never seen. (c.) The best car in the current Volkswagen Model range. Whaddya mean it's pronounced "Gee-El-Eye"? 'Twas as though they had wandered into the VW showroom expecting the usual delicious and slightly unreliable bratwurst and been handed an Ikea hot-dog instead. Yes, a bargain at just 99 cents, but made of gym-mat foam and not tasty pork by-products. Critics were apoplectic, and the buying public responded immediately – by completely ignoring them and snapping up thousands of Jettas. I quite enjoy that, as it must have punctured a few bombastic egos. Not to worry though, as VW still sells a premium smokie-on-a-bun for all you sausage enthusiasts out there. Oh wait, no, this is a Kia Rio. Oops. One criticism of the GLI immediately is that it appears to be just fifteen feet of some car. I imagine that if you went down to the Car Store and asked for, "One Car, please. What? Oh I don't know… German flavour I suppose," then this is what you'd get. Yes, it has two-tone, multi-spoke alloy wheels and a colour-matched grille – but what doesn't these days? I will say that the Glee looks fairly good here in black, but if you take a look at the car Jack drove in his 2.0T Intramural League test, a silver GLI can be about as bland as unsalted porridge. However, methinks this is a very, very good thing. A Lamborghini Reventon might look like a stealth fighter, but the Glee is actually a stealth car: just another five-seater people-pod; one more unremarkable corpuscle blending in with the flow on an arterial highway. Handy if you're going to cane it a little, but more on that in a bit. Other than that though, it's a sensible, conservative sort of place to be, with comfortable seats, an immense amount of rear legroom and a cavernous trunk. And there's another advantage too. If you were picking up your new fiancee's parents at the airport, and you didn't quite get along with them just yet, being in that not-good-enough-for-our-son/daughter zone (that sometimes never goes away), you could be perfectly safe arriving in a GLI. Then, on the drive home, you completely. Ruin. Everything. It took four different axle-backs on the back of my personal WRX to find the right blend of growly aggression without boorish bellowing. VW got it right straight out of the factory with a thrumpety symphony that's part panthera tigris purr, and part strafing-run Stuka. The ubiquitous 200hp 2.0T has never sounded better. As such, you will want to dip into the power reserves early and often, and with a phenomenally low torque peak providing insta-shove around 1700rpm, the Glee provokes… well, just see definition (a.) We live in a world where a Hyundai puts out a turbo-four with a full 25% more power than VW's version, but there's more to it than just peak horsepower figures. The Glee isn't underpowered, and it's not overpowered. It's right-powered. Yes, there are moments where a little more thrust would not have gone amiss, but the whole package is so composed-yet-thrilling that you find yourself willing the car along, wringing it out, diving into the corners and blasting out of them. Meanwhile, your future mother-in-law is clutching her purse with a white-knuckled grip implying that hissed undertones are about to be exchanged with her son/daughter on the subject of That Young Man/Woman. But what do you care? It'd be easy enough to back off the throttle and find that the GLI is a comfortable cruiser with its softer-than-a-GTI suspension. The Fender-brand stereo is phenomenal and the fuel economy can even be quite good, if you're gentle. Yet whenever I climbed into my 6-speed tester, I experienced a kinship of the sort that Tazio Nuvolari must have felt, nursing his somewhat-wheezy Alfa-Romeo to that now-legendary victory over the Auto-Union juggernauts. It seems Mazda isn't the only company that knows something about Jinba Ittai. But – and here comes a But so big that it should be written in flaming letters three miles high; a Mix-a-lot-sized conjunction that I don't like (and I cannot lie) – but, it's still a Volkswagen, and that means Your Mileage May Vary. This car, you understand, had all of 1500 miles on the clock, and while press cars generally take more abuse than somebody who expresses a political viewpoint in the comments section of a Youtube video, I generally have to say this failing was unacceptable. Unacceptable, or at least very disappointing. So can I recommend the GLI? Yes, though not unreservedly. It's a fantastic car, but I'm not sure how it's going to be next season. Volkswagen provided the car reviewed and insurance from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com | |||
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Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Review: 2012 Volkswagen Jetta GLI Take Two
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