2015 Volkswagen Jetta - Road Test Review

Report: Rahul Kapoor; Photography:Mohd. Nasir

The executive sedan segment in India is slowly and gradually growing. This has become a major market in India as more and more car companies who didn’t see any profits in the segment have all brought out new, updated and modernly styled cars.

Volkswagen’s contender in the executive class is the Jetta. The Jetta has been with us for a while and now, there is a new one. Volkswagen offers the new Jetta with petrol and diesel engine option. We tested the fully kitted out 2 litre diesel Highline TDI with Volkswagen’s brilliant DSG automatic gear box.

On the exterior of the Jetta, Volkswagen has updated both the front and rear bumpers and added a new front grille to match the new design philosophy of Volkswagen. The front bumpers now have fog lamps and the rear tail lamps are also updated housed on a newly shaped boot lid. A really clever feature on the Jetta is that it has cornering head lamps as well which is highly useful on dimly lit roads of India. Interior wise, the Jetta gets some more updates with a new instrument cluster in front of the driver with a flat bottomed steering wheel. The centre console also gets a new Piano Black finish with dual climate control. The climate control on one hand is very easy to use, but the Piano black on any car gets a bit annoying if you’re a perfectionist because it attracts a lot of dust and it will get on your nerves, but that’s just the way it is. 

The driver seat gets electronic controls with lumbar support, while the passenger seat is manually adjustable, the steering is also adjustable with rake and reach function, and the rear seats gets an air-con vent in the middle but no separate climate control. The car now gets plush leather seat that are extremely comfortable in the front as well as the back, with the rear now coming with quite a decent amount of legroom as well.

Practicality is where the Jetta really scores. The Jetta has a massive boot of 510 litres of space. Also a convenient feature in the Jetta is that with a pull of two levers, you can fold down the rear seats from the boot without having to go around and fold them from the front. This makes it easy to load bulky luggage faster into the car.

To drive, the Jetta is extremely smooth and comfortable as the suspension soaks up the bumps quite nicely. The 2 litre turbo charged diesel engine packs 138bhp and 320Nm of torque, and the excellent DSG gearbox shifts seamlessly. The throttle responds quite immediately in regular driving mode, and it gets sharper when you put it in Sport mode. The acceleration is quite liner and smooth though the 0-100kmph is around 9.5 seconds, but it feels much quicker because the power is delivered is a civilised manner, and not all at the same time. Using the paddle shifters in manual mode for the gears gives instantaneous shifts at each flick and you can redline as much as you want. And the car always has more to deliver. The weight of car feels balanced through the corners and the tyres offer a decent amount of grip.

As standard, the Jetta has many safety and convenience features like ABS, ESP and 6 airbags. It also has some added and clever features like follow-me-home head lamps as well. It offers a decent mileage of 16.9kmpl with the automatic gearbox and around 19kmpl with the manual. So if you are scouting for an executive segment saloon under 20 lakhs rupees, the Jetta is an option really worth taking a look at.