1997 Volkswagen Jetta GT review from North America

See 1999 "do not buy a Jetta, unless you want to spend a lot of money" and see Comments.

...Ditto, same problem here. Started a year ago, at first the hesitation only happened once a week, and now a couple of times a day. Brought my 97 Jetta GT in to the dealership twice and they never could find what was wrong with it, emailed the service manager and ignored it.

This is how it goes; the hesitation comes after the car has been sitting for a while and at the first stop, the car goes wild. You can usually anticipate it with how the brakes feel, you brake at the stop, a slight vibration, and when you hit the gas pedal, it does not want to go, seems to stay in neutral (even backs up a little) (and I have an automatic) and if you push the gas pedal too much, it gives you a hard kick. So the way to go is to hit the gas pedal, real slowly and it doesn't give you too much trouble. But hey, if they are cars behind you, that can be a problem, stuck there for a moment.

So I'm pretty much out of solutions!!! My car is not that old, so want to keep it for a while, even though it is costing me a lot in maintenance and other fix-ups, for a 5-year perfect maintenance record, the total comes to $2,500, everything seems to go bad early (battery at 30,000; front and rear brakes at 35,000; exhaust system at 47,000 etc). Without this problem, the car is great, but from my experiences I don't know if I want continue with Volkswagens, 2 generation of jetta/passat owners, maybe try them all, Beetle or Golf next? So live with the hesitation problem for now?? I'll try bringing it in at another dealership and hear what they have to say. Does anyone know what this is? To be continued...