Gadgetory

I feel bad for the Jetta TDI sometimes here it is the diesel hatin country kind of barely getting traction in its diesel form why because we're kind of stupid around here this is one of the best executed diesel cars in the world let's try the 2014 jetta sportwagen TDI with the sunroof that's a model by the way and check the tech that seems to me almost everybody I run into doesn't own a Jetta scoffs it a Jetta they think it's kind of plain Jane vanilla a pitiful little suburban wagon I love these cards I find them to be reserved austere a beautiful steady hand on their design and I love station wagons this is a sixth generation Jetta which means that they kind of cheaped out since the fifth generation they took a complex rear suspension and made it a cheaper beam construction the fancy one stays in Europe they deleted leather interior that's fine by me and supposedly cheaped out the materials around the dashboard and such as well now inside they may have cheaper than this interior but it still works for me I think the materials are still quite good the layout like the outside of the car is austere it's good design it doesn't appeal to everybody a lot of folks look at it and say oh it looks plain others look at it and say no it's tasteful it's your call now an LCD head unit is standard on this car navigation within it is optional and ugly is included at no extra cost this is my least favorite head unit of any of the cars that I like out there in the world I find it ugly it's kind of not very intuitive as well they've done a little bit to kind of move things around to make them a little more logical but they don't take good advantage of the real estate and I find that though the response is good they've just got a lame sort of a flat looking interface this should just be a basic head unit without LCD unless you have now all the sources though are good to go from aux am/fm HD radio satellite with a complimentary three months now what's missing is USB instead you have MMI there multimedia interface or MDI they call it on Volkswagens that means you can put different pigtails on here which I think could include a USB female but the biggest problem is this it lives on this short stiff cord inside this tight little bit achill and for a modern iOS device you got to use an adapter because last time I checked they haven't done the small connector that Apple uses now the Lightning connector for this pigtail which now means nothing fits in the console your iOS device will always have to live outside like that now luckily we have the main transmission the base rig which is a six-speed Mae you will top two gears by the way or overdrive part of how they get more mpg out of this guy and with a diesel with all that torque that's fine you can actually go with two OverDrive's and do everything else and your other taller remaining four gears the other optional gearbox on this is very interesting your automatic is a direct shift gearbox a dual clutch DSG there is no traditional automatic in the lineup that's kind of ambitious now I love the sunroof in this car it's a trim level on the Jetta SportWagen this is jetta sportwagen TDI with sunroof this control here gives you both the glass and the screen you rotate to preset positions here all the way open and you get this enormous hole in the roof it's just this incredible dramatic opening but I love the screen here as well because it rolls completely out of the way without a mid bar so you get this whole open expanse and with the top open like so and then you close this screen up you have this very nice kind of screened-in room if you will but I don't think any other car I know of offers ok TDI it means several things it's a diesel with turbo charging and direct injection direct injection via a common rail technology which you can see right here this was very revolutionary in the diesel engine world for passenger cars what happens is it's a very precise engine as a result of all these technologies and you get 140 horsepower who cares 236 foot-pounds of torque that's the nice number but it's been tuned relatively toward efficiency so 0 to 60 is it kind of ok 10 seconds for this 3,300 pound car the MPG resulting from that is 30 city 42 highway pretty good stuff unless you get the automatic now you drop down to 29 city 39 highway still good but not gonna blow anybody away the problem is the automatics and this market need to blow people away having to commit to a manual to get full mpg out of this guy is a bit problematic this engine of course is a rock star for VW final in the golf you find it in the B you'll find the Audi a3 it's all over the place for them so it's a well proven voter don't have any ideas that it's somehow New Age tech might not have a future let's go right okay under way the first thing I noticed is the torque is really good low to mid range like 1200 to 3500 rpm is your sweet spot notice you don't need to go much beyond that and you really can't above 4000 there's no point even though turbos do spread the power around a little better it is a definite different engine note you will notice that yes it's not like a gas engine and it doesn't reward those high rpm run ups that a gas engine typically does I've got this sneaking suspicion that they've tuned out some of the low-end torque in this current powertrain for economy because it doesn't quite have that giddy oomph that I'm used to in the TDI power trains I've driven in the last couple of years I'm not quite sure why here with my finger on it but there's something going on where they've detuned some of the low-end lobe for efficiency is my hunch that said there's plenty to go around nice taut suspension that's a VW thing they can't help themselves there luckily good visibility out the back and you can see what I love about this roof that's a beautiful piece of glass up there especially in a car in a pretty modest price point it's a luxury feel very nice overall I don't know why I don't own one of these I love wagons I love diesels I just hate to buy new cars and new car prices okay let's price our little oil-burning friend 28 for for a TDI Sportwagon with the sunroom remember that's a model not an option the nav model above this is $800 more don't bother that head unit scrap the DSG automatic model is $1100 more don't bother it scrubs off mpg that's kind of why you buy this guy so 28 4 here it is now I really like this car but I'm partial in some odd ways that make me kind of a calming in America I like diesels I like station wagons and I also like torque over horsepower a lot of folks share that with me an issue to watch is what the Chevy Cruze diesel will do to this guy's market share we reviewed that one recently and it offers up to 7 mpg better on the highway plus an automatic but no wagon