2001 Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg review from North America

Huge amount of recalls; more recall notices than phone bills in my mail.

Window fell into the door frame.

Both heated seats died. Passenger side died a second time. Still dead.

Interior lights failed many times.

Transmission completely failed @ 35000km total replacement.

Car jerks and shudders violently when trying to accelerate for the first time on a cold start up.

Replaced fuel injectors.

Replaced mass air flow sensor, twice.

Multiple other parts replaced regarding the check engine light and shuddering problem. Dealer assumed it was fuel related.

Most recently they re-flashed onboard computer claiming it was the cause of the shuddering / engine light. But, 2 weeks after that the issue resumed.

Goes through a lot of oil.

Side mirrors have burn marks from the defroster.

The interior finish (rubbery black stuff) around the CD player, Shifter, and on door handles is peeling. Dealer claims that "This is normal, it always happens." Sounds like such a line to me. I'm sorry, our cars always explode at 20,000 km. you'll just have to deal with it, it's normal.

Cruise Control failed completely at some point. Fixed now.

The alloy on the rims that came with the car have peeled and chipped away on all rims and look like garbage, This started as early as 20,000km.

The car handles well and used to have decent getup and go. Not anymore due to the millions of issues.

Very comfortable ride for driver / passenger. Pretty cramped for the unfortunate people in the back seat.

The stock monsoon stereo is nice.

Quiet ride.

Over all an amazing car when something isn't broken... thus far, the first 8 days I owned it and another 5-10 days over the past 6 years.