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Jetta....

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R6MGS

R6MGS

Yoda
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My son needed to learn driving a standard for his new job, so instead of burning out one of my own clutches I figured we'd rent one. The only rental I was able to find in a standard was a 2003 Jetta TDI with about 60,000miles. This car is the biggest peice of you know what I've ever driven, I have no idea why anyone would actually wanna own something like this! The deisel flatlines at about 4500rpm, the gearbox is sloppy, interior is noisy at highway speeds, ride is rough, and smooth shifts are difficult even for an experience driver like myself. Interior ergonomics are terribly designed and cheap(The entire centre armrest just broke off). It has stalled out twice already and took 3-4 mins to restart again. The check engine light came on earlier today, and has been going on and off since. Sorry for the rant...but I needed to get it out; son was great...picked it up and in about 15 minutes he was doing real good. If anyone is considering a VW as a next vehicle, I'd say look elsewhere.
 
My stepdad has a 2004 diesel Jetta for his commuter and loves it. It will cruise at 80mph down the interstate without effort and returns about 47 miles per gallon doing it.

Do you have much diesel experience? I ask because there are some major differences in operations between diesels and gasoline cars. 4500rpm is high rpm for a diesel btw. They are low rpm torque engines more than high rpm horsepower engines and they tend to drive differently than gasoline engines. Also sounds like that interior had been abused (likely in a rental), VW interiors usually hold up pretty well.

How many miles did it have? Sounds as if someone beat you to the abusing part of that car. A four year old rental is an OLD rental car too.
 
I agree with Shawn, I have had several VWs over the years, and have found them to be durable and reliable, but then I have looked after them properly. The centre armrest had broken on one of mine but it was fixed under warranty and did not break again. Otherwise, no quibbles!
 
As far as diesels go....I had a deisel pickup for a year(Y2K...work thing)and I didn't like the whole diesel thing much. I will admit the gas mileage in this thing was great(but since I work for an oil company...that factor doesn't matter much to me). it had about 60,000 miles on it, and it wasn't a rental previous to this...the owner of this rental place owned a used car lot also....so when I asked him for a standard he pulled this off the lot. Guess I was a little harsh on it thou, it got the job done.
 
he prob knew what you were up to lol. One of my boys has a 01 jetta 1.8t darn quick little car, has about 138k on it
 
A rental with a clutch? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/lol.gif I bet 50,000 of those miles were put on by people learning how to drive a manual trans. It would have been interesting to take a peak at the trans oil probably "sparkley" with little bits of broken off gears, syncros and other parts floating around inside.

Seriously, the VW TDI engine is actually pretty good. Lots of them are in use as taxi's around here, and they seem to hold up fairly well under rather difficult service.
You need to keep the rpms down, but it has lots of tourqe at lower RPMs. It is just a matter of getting used to shifting at a different point than with gas engines.
 
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