Just slightly beaten by the golf which remains the highest selling Volkswagen car ever! Its one of the longest running brand under the VW group.
How did it come into existence – people loved golf, but its hatchback design was a limitation, thus the company thought of bringing a 3 box design thus giving a bigger trunk and slightly comfier seats catering an audience that wanted something more than the golf. Of course, about half the population calls it the golf sedan.
History - Over the years as cars have improved and what we hope from a proper sedan they have gotten longer and wider. The current iteration of Jetta is bigger than the first generation Passat and looks like a baby Arteon! The brand is present since 1979 and since then has had more iterations than the iron man suit!
The first being the 1979 model which compared to today was just bare bones and was the first implementation of the idea “golf with a trunk”. It had a tiny 1.6 litre engine which had 76 horsepower, sufficient at the time to pull a small sedan.
In 1984 with the introduction of “GLI variant” they tried to go sporty with the idea - why can't a family car have a nice engine - gave in a 90-horsepower engine and a gearbox with short gear ratios and first gen to introduce a sportier handling - received good reviews
Very soon just the next year came in the second gen Jetta - 1985! They threw a 1.8 litre this time with 100 horsepower, with a lot of improvements inside focusing on comfort. In 1986 the same motor was tuned to produce 2 more horses - taking the total beyond 100 - 102 horsepower
As VW's golf sedan experiment was beginning to take more and more market segments - they upshifted and launched the GLI 2nd gen with 123 horsepower making it a true fast sedan at that time and then finally in 1990 they introduced a 2 litre motor with 134 horsepower! It changed its category - it was now being compared to the big names like BMW 320 in many categories.
Then as 90s were famous for bigger and meaner engines - VW being very eager and experimental with the JETTA - threw in a 2.8 litre V6 petrol in 1992 - which was the 3rd generation model.
The generation 4 Jetta (1999) didn't have engine changes but a ton of interior and exterior changes which truly brought out the true German gem - enhancing the build and finish quality which was starting to receive a lot of praise.
The next GLI refresh (2003) is what looks closer to the modern Jetta's we see and this is from where more and more elegance was visible in the design.
The 5th generation Jetta was not that impressive as VW had slowed down on engine improvements, and similar with the 6th generation - VW slowly with the introduction of stricter emission norms starting adding turbochargers which was not liked by everyone due to the initial lag but the brand has had a cult following over the years and stayed a strong contender in its class.
They gave the Next GLI (2012) a DSG with a 2 litre diesel - although not as eager to be pushed as hard as the previous generations but the DSG being a near perfect gearbox - made the drives fun and very comfortable.
