Gadgetory

in a sea of little compact cars it always seemed to try and look like more than they are the Jetta is a refreshing departure its austere it's German it's solid but it's not fancy and glitzy we're gonna prove it now as we drive the 2014 Jetta se with an all-new motor and check your tech I knew after about 10 minutes in this car when I first took it out this was going to be a video about the simplicity of the Jetta and how it excels so well when it's not trimmed up I'm not a huge fan of Volkswagen technology in the cabin it tends to be kind of dull their audio systems don't impress me things of that nature but the essential cabin structure the way this car is laid out it's sort of German nature makes it great at its core and that's how I'd order a Jetta I also like the fact that it's a handsome cabin not a fancy cabin too many cars in this class tend to lay on the plastic chrome and the plaster wood and all kinds of swoopy designs to draw your eye away from the fact that it's an inexpensive car well it's an inexpensive car there's no reason to make apologies for that if it does what it does well now as I mentioned you don't pay a lot for a Jetta se but you do pay one penalty it doesn't look like much there's not much trim at this trim level it looks like just one big blob of paint on wheels if you go a little higher in their hierarchy you do pick up things like fog lights that do wonders for the face and you can option this guy up with a little simple little trim spoiler on the trunk lid sounds silly but it does wonders for that sad little rump and for reasons that are lost on me the connectivity package that we have includes alloy wheels go figure ah inside is an oasis of yesterday this car being simply trimmed has no stuff that has a learning curve you've got a radio it was funny when I told Antoine I was gonna take this car out and get ready to review what he says enjoy the am/fm he wasn't kidding am/fm radio no HD satellite radio right there media brings you up bluetooth streaming or my iPod which is here in the console and sit this is a throwback to the way cars used to be but it's also refreshing to see a head unit that is so robust and simple that you don't need to think about it and be distracted while using it simple gauge cluster goes with it as well tach speedo and a simple fuel gate I don't think it even has a temperature gauge I'm sure you'll get an A you light when the things melting down but beyond that this is what you see one screw up here ergonomically though when you want to page through the various odometers you have to pass through every time setting the clock look at that I have to set the hour then the minute then I can get to odo 102 and DTE I have to be missing something but I don't think I am similar on the climate controls this is a vehicle that has no automatic temperature control on it you simply set a fan speed and ballpark hot or cold we have the 5-speed manual gearbox an automatic is available we'll talk about that in a moment and once we get on the road we're gonna see this is actually a pretty nice shifter for a car that's at a very modest price the bigger theme on this vehicle aside from its simplicity is that it's got a nice clean design in here everything is very direct that may be surprising to you because normally when I get a VW head unit that has navigation I'm going the other way it's not direct it's poorly designed it's just plain ugly this is actually the way VW head units do best now where this car gets its with connectivity label is largely these buttons up here I wrench an SOS this is kind of an OnStar rig to be honest not much more than that it's not like a Lexus enform or something where you get this whole concierge thing where they go you know find your theater tickets or a movie recommendation instead this is relatively sort of survivalist type stuff they can tell you where your car is unlock the doors send emergency roadside assistance or you can push the red button if you're in a real panic situation connecting to the information center we've all cornices with Margie how can I dismiss you today the other part of connectivity is over here that you have bluetooth streaming audio so put those all together and that's what makes this an SE with connectivity now believe it or not under the hood of our new Jetta is actually a new engine and this is an interesting story a VW typically on these cars on the garden-variety would have a two and a half liter inline five a kind of bizarre motor that really only Volvo shares an architecture with I mean who doesn't five cylinder in line these days or anytime but they've gotten away from that now which is kind of good most reviewers thought it was kind of an agricultural motor here is a downsized version of their 2.0 turbo which a lot of folks think is a great engine 1.8 liter in this case sitting sidesaddle turbocharged as I mentioned and has direct injection what they call FSI add the turbo you get TSI that's their nomenclature 170 horse 184 foot-pounds of torque pretty good numbers gets this roughly three thousand pound car to 60 in seven point three seconds while delivering 26 36 mpg also nice numbers all around not stunning on the zero to 60 but the rest is pretty good now we're talking about the manual transmission for those zero to sixty numbers and mpg you take a bit of a haircut on both if you get the automatic so I don't recommend it unless you don't know how to drive something with a clutch okay now underway this car has got an interesting power curve so when I get started I'm going to feel it like I do with every gear change you start off with an initial dead spot the initial tip in is there because the turbos got to spool up they've not ironed that out like you might find on a much pricier car but once you get past the initial spool up and like I say it's in almost every gear or transition you got to bring it up but then you get this nice long fat fan to power that I really enjoy driving so it's a trade off and certainly part of the low displacement and high fuel economy of this engine the transmission and clutch engagement is quite good it's a little bit vague on the gate the gears are very close together sort of left to right I'd like a little better spacing there but that makes for a nice short throw at least laterally overall it's a nice gearbox combination a nice clutch feel the ride quality is really good in this car it is not harsh but it's also not sloppy it's biased a little bit more toward comfort than the other Jettas higher up that have a sports suspension but I could live with this suspension all day long this is a really nice bias for everyday driving and the engine note is very smooth it's what you're not hearing in this video right now is any kind of a coffee grinder with nuts and bolts thrown in it sound that I hear on a lot of cheap cars this one's really smoothed out better than that last two and a half litre five which had some discordant notes to it all-in-all what you're finding in this car is a very nice deme German driving experience this is what Volkswagen used to do so well and is doing well again now if you're looking for the sporty kind of VW that you had when you had your 80s rabbit that's not here remember they are chasing the market that is owned by civic by focus by the Hyundai products and Kia's and many others that are that are going after a mainstream driver so they've they've sort of dfangs some of the handling and bias of comfort okay let's price our jetta SC not bottom of the line but close to it it's going to run you about nineteen seven out the door with destination if you want to have an automatic the six-speed Tiptronic civ ailable for eleven hundred dollars I wouldn't do it then you've got another 1500 or so that adds the connectivity trim level here and incongruously alloy wheels so about 21 - all in for this guy and that's CNET style but not really because you can't load up more tech options on an SC you've got to go buy a higher trip level car