The 2011 Volkswagen Jetta was unveiled to the public in America last week, and to make an proper impact, Volkswagen decided that stopping the city streets would be the best way to go about it.
Here’s a video of the San Francisco launch preparation as the Jetta is picked up by a crane and placed on the fourth floor of St. Regis hotel. This involved blocking a few lanes of traffic for most of the evening. Nice effort.
The new VW Jetta features body lines and contours of the latest Golf, sharing similar headlights, bonnet and guards.
It does look significantly more masculine than the current Jetta, and even looks a bit more grown up, cosmetically and proportionately.
The interior is typical German quality with its fit and finish said to be on par with its predecessor.
From the outside, the new car looks a bit bigger than the current model, but from the inside, the rear seat legroom does look a bit more accommodating than the current model.
Check out our detailed review of the current Jetta because this 2011 model isn’t planned to go on sale here in Australia until the end of the year. It does looks like it’ll be worth the wait, though.
Definite details and engine specifications haven’t been confirmed for the Australian production version. We’ll bring them to hand as soon as they surface.








So, they’ve cut prices, but, went from 4 wheel disks back to rear drums, removed the IRS for trailing arm rear suspension, and the base 2.0L engine makes 88kw. Since when is any of that acceptable in 2010?
Sounds absurd. Where did you read all of that?
insideline.com/volkswagen/jetta/2011/2011-volkswagen-jetta-sel-first-drive.html
Thanks for the link. Americans should feel depressed that Volkswagen thinks so little of them. Or do they bring it upon themselves through a historic lack of discernment?
Volkswagen did all that to cut the base price in line with its competitors. But yeah, in this day and age when you competitors can offer all the good bits at a low price, Volkswagen has to lift its game much higher.
What gives you the impression they’ve got rear drum brakes ?
Front end is horrid, rear looks like a current gen Liberty – slabby and fat. Clearly aimed at the US market.
TomJ doesn’t know his head from his backside. You can see from the side photo that it has rear discs.
Golf v front would have been better
Possibly the most boring, American VWW I’ve ever seen. What a disappointment. I hope the design cues aren’t carried over to the next gen Golf.
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You have them throughout your post! People who live in glass houses………
The high end models have disks
insideline.com/volkswagen/jetta/2011/2011-volkswagen-jetta-sel-first-drive.html
copy paste that into your browser. Stop hating on me when you have no idea.
Too safe.
Very boring.
Could be Mitsubishi Lancer if didn’t have VW badges.
An ugly Liberty lookalike. At least the interior is nice though.
Whilst I prefer the previous Jetta to this one for styling (too bland for me), to suggest it looks like the Liberty is truly a ridiculous observation.
Reading other press releases yesterday clearly stated we are looking at US model specs in these releases. The Aussie spec cars will be based on Euro spec & will therefor have more upmarket interiors (plastics, radio’s etc,) & exterior parts ie: 4x disc brakes…..
looks sh*t hot
i’d have it. love the vw products
Looks allright, a bit dull though.
the only problem with drum brakes is long term maintainence is a tad more difficult, otherwise they generally work well these days when combined with abs and ebd.
looks good, only if we were back in 1999
I like it,but it will have to compete with a lot of competitors,such as the current Honda Accord Euro.