New appreciation for my Focus
 

I had a business trip to Boston recently. Hertz Gold had a GMC Denali reseved for me. Not being a fan of SUVs, I asked if they had something else. "How does a 2013 Jetta sound?" Sounded good to me.

Wrong.

Honestly? It was the most boring car I've driven in years. Boring to look at. Boring to sit in. Boring to drive. No style, inside or out. Just plain and bland. A transportation appliance.

Yes, I know rental cars don't have the goodies like my Focus Titanium does. But the rental Cruze and Focus I had last year would run circles around this Jetta. In fact, that generic Focus SE rental in San Francisco last year was a leading reason why I ended up buying my Focus.

Tim

Should have gone with the Denali!


Sent from my maxiPad

hows this for focus appreciation? 50 mile highway trip traveling 55-65 mph, including stopping on the shoulder then shooting back on the freeway equaled this:

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ocus/47mpg.jpg

Truth be told I was driving behind a Dodge Ram diesel towing a 20 ton trailer (the entire time). FYI, the Ram averaged 7 mpg during that trip while I averaged 47 in it's draft. Also, I did average 36 mpg on a (1000 mile) highway trip under normal higher speed driving conditions, with the AC on (non-drafting), which is still pretty good though.

The American Jetta is terrible. It's basically VW's ploy to bust into the American market of cheap ass cars.

Me and my wife was in a ride along in a hot air balloon chase truck. The chase truck was a 2010 2wd cummins dually with a 6 speed. He averaged 27 mpg the entire trip with lots of stop, go, and turn arounds and lots of sitting at idle. He was pulling a trailer with all the equipment for the balloon. We was actually talking about the mileage because his partner in the truck was talking about how bad his duramax is on fuel.

I feel your pain. I've been driving a Passat rental the past couple of weeks, and it's pretty darned bland and uninspiring.

Now if only I could convince my wife of that. She has driven nothing but Jettas since back before I met her. When she needs a new car she will just go get one no questions asked, no other cars researched or test driven. If nothing else, they have good marketing I guess. Works on some people.

That's really too bad. The previous couple Jetta generations were good cars and solidly German in feel and driving dynamics. This one might as well have an Oldsmobile badge on it.

There are many better small cars.

Tim

It seems that with the current Jetta VW was trying to make a Camry and, what's worse, they succeeded.

Last week I had my car in the body shop and had a 2012 VW Jetta S as my rental car and it had no interior style, it was hella plain and boring, i mean yeah the tiptronic was cool. Other then that, the automatic was less then fun to drive. it WAS boring to drive for sure and I missed my Focus S right away.

Hey hey, Toyota can actually make a car.