1997 Volkswagen Jetta GLX review from North America

I have owned my car for 11 years. During that time the window regulators seem to be the main problem with this car. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have purchased the same model with manual windows. I have replaced both the driver and passenger window motors at least two times, each.

Aside from that, the car has only minor issues. Everything else works exactly as it should. The car has 141,000 miles on it and is still running perfectly.

With regular maintenance I believe I can squeeze another 50-100k miles out of this vehicle. I drive about 30 miles round trip to work in every day in comfort.

While I really like the car (which is obvious since I've owned it for so long). I have not have a good experience with the any of dealerships I taken it in to for service.

Once I took the car in to a VW dealer for a door handle problem, and they broke one of my window regulators while fixing the door handle. They then tried to blame the car and claimed it was like that when I drove it in. Of course, it wasn't broken when I brought the car in and clearly they broke it. They agreed to pay for the part but not the labor. My window wouldn't stay up so I agreed (because I wasn't going to drive it around like that... I live in Seattle!).

I never took it back there again and have told at least a thousand people that story. I had much better experiences at non-dealer servicers. They are awesome.

Simply due to the ultra crappy service I've received at literally every VW dealership in the area, I would never buy another VW again. However, the car itself is a great machine. I will continue to drive it until it is a hunk of rusting metal.