2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Review

For Volkswagen, diesels are no fad. Is that smart, or just stubborn? - CNET reviews the 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI.

2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Review Diesels, a lot of carmakers are putting them back in their lineup but Volkswagen's pretty much always had them there like with this '09 Jetta TDI. Let's find out what they knew all this time while the rest of the world turned up its nose at gasoline's oily cousin. Now here's the real story on anything badge TDI, the TDI a 2-liter, inline 4, turbo direct injected diesel engine. Turbo charger takes care of a whole lot of the sluggishness diesels used to have. The direct injection adds to performance as well as clean-burning efficiency. The output is 140 horsepower, 236 foot pounds of torque, nice number there, 8.2 seconds is your 0 to 60 but that's not why you buy this car, 30/41 MPG is, and I've left the engine running all this time while chatting with you so you can see it's easy to be heard over a modern diesel. Your gearbox choices are a standard 6-speed manual or you can get a 6 speed DSG, a dual clutch automated manual but that will shave 1 MPG off your mileage figures. This damn head unit again, it's just –– I don't like the look of it or I don't like the sound of it. No matter what I coax out of the base, the mid, the treble, the balance, the fader, the source, I can't get anything shy of kind of a wooden sound I would definitely upgrade. If you do upgrade it's to a 30GB hard drive based navigation head unit with 20GB set aside for your music. The interface is a touch-screen but it's still not the prettiest unit on the planet. You'll also get what they call a multi-device interface. You can connect various portables to the system. If you don't upgrade you get what we have in this car a plain old AUX jack right here and the sources being AM/FM, 6-disk CD slot and satellite radio being in this case Sirius. Now if you're pinching pennies and if you buy a high-economy car like this you may be there's a middle ground stick with this crummy sounding stock head unit but add an iPod adapter that can be had ala carte for a very low price. On the road you realize why Europeans love their turbo diesels. This little 2 liter moves this car like a V6 once the turbo spools up. And with a manual gear box you can stay on boost pretty well. I don't know how well the DSG gearbox is programmed to do the same. I'm reminded about one of the truisms of the car business, “when a vehicle has good torque it just feels more expensive”, which is something the Jetta TDI is not. It starts off a little under $23,000.00. Now, to add the touch-screen hard drive Nav system with music storage and multi-adapter that's about $1990.00, and the DSG gearbox $1100.00.