2022 Jetta GLI

[AKROVER]

This week I ordered a blue 2022 Jetta GLI from the dealer in Rapid City. Hopefully it will be there before us. My wife is finally retiring from the Foreign Service. We will be moving from Ecuador to South Dakota in late September.

This is a bad time to be buying a car. Technologies are changing. Manuals are disappearing. Prices are high. Inventories are low. The supply chain is uncertain. The dealer will try to find me a car if my order proves too late for my needs. Worst case is that I lose my $500 deposit. The VW regional rep was saying 3 months at the earliest and six at the latest for my order. We will be arriving in 4, but I think supply chain issues are easing so I have some confidence that my order will be filled in time. I could have rolled the dice on finding one in someone’s inventory in September. I could have flown from Ecuador to perhaps Denver or Minneapolis and had a short drive home with a new car, but I could tell already that color choice was going to be limited, not to mention the risk of finding nothing. While I don’t care too much about color, there is a $600 option that puts on black wheels, a black roof, and a few other black accents that I find both unappealing and expensive. It seems about half the cars in inventory right now have that package. By ordering, I should get to specify the exact color, but someone else did that for me (my wife really wanted the blue but it has grown on me).

Some of my biggest car projects have been the purchase. I have been contemplating this next car for years as we planned for our retirement. I can’t tell you how many hours I have wasted watching YouTube reviews of all the different possibilities with a manual transmission. I suspect this could be my last opportunity ever to buy a new car with a manual. The GLI has been near the top of the list for quite some time but moved up significantly when I finally admitted to myself that I don’t have the interest nor skills to explore the limits of a modern sports car on dry pavement. I love driving, but I really do drive like an old man. I would look like an idiot driving a sports car that way. The GLI seems to have the right blend of luxury, performance, and practicality for me. It is a well-equipped car that handles well and can hit 100mph in the quarter while still giving me a chance at seeing 40mpg – sounds perfect to me. The sedan market is interesting right now as there are a few choices with manuals, but the GLI seemed either nicer or more practical in my comparisons.

It might be premature posting this at least four months before delivery, but I thought I would document the completion of the shopping phase. It is fun to look back on the life of everyone’s vehicles in this forum.

[Maverick]

It is fun to look back on the life of everyone’s vehicles in this forum

.

Including our own. I used the project threads as journals for things I'd need to know later on and, now that I don't have a project, I reminisce over them. It's amazing how much of what I did was forgotten. (I put front discs on the Maverick??) Expect you'll enjoy the threads a lot in the future. TS.org has been great.

[Fred32v]

There must be drag stripes in South Dakota, just wonderin'.

Grins.

[MostMint]

Well if that falls through you might want to get something to get by til these become available: https://www.toyota.com/upcoming-vehicles/grcorolla/

It'll cost an extra $10k +

[AKROVER]

My GLI turned white. I am pretty sure this is final because I now have a VIN and a copy of the window sticker.

The last week was a bit stressful. I found out my order was not going to be filled anytime soon, if at all. The sales manager and her VW rep began trying to find me something. Eventually VW allocated me one of the early model year 2023 vehicles already off the line, but it was going to have the added-cost black wheels and it was not going to arrive in Rapid City until late October (a month of car rental was looking painfully expensive). Last night the VW rep managed to snag me a car sitting at the port by getting the dealer it was destined for to trade it for my allocated unit. My GLI should be waiting for me when I arrive in Rapid City about a month from now. Coincidentally, white was my first choice of color and Kris doesn’t actually hate it.

I got stung in the deal a little bit, but far less than that potential rental car cost. There are two overpriced yet useful accessories already with the car (WeatherTech floormats and a Homelink rearview mirror). I was also aware that many cars are now being shipped missing standard features, but I had not heard of this problem applying to the GLI until I saw my window sticker. My car will not have the ventilated seats. That missing feature is listed on the sticker with a $200 reduction in price. I have never had ventilated seats so I really won’t know what I am missing. My guess is that they ran out of the dual zone climate controllers for the top trim Jetta and GLI and so they substituted in the dual zone climate controller from the SE trim of the Jetta which lacks the buttons for the seat ventilation. That also likely means that it is something that could be easily upgraded in the future just by finding the right controller. The same controller has been used in Jettas since at least 2019 and it appears to be the same unit used currently in the Atlas and Taos, likely a few other VW models. So perhaps I will someday unlock the ventilated seats.

[Basement Paul]

All Volkswagens look better in white IMO.

-BP

[AKROVER]

I arrived in Rapid City yesterday and picked up my car this morning. It arrived one day before me, just in time. We did a bit of running around today, but with so many things to do, I still haven't figured out all of the features. It is funny buying a car over the phone without having seen or driven one, but it seems like I did my homework well enough. If I get a chance tomorrow, I will try to post some actual pictures.

[wxo]

For those of you that, like me, don't know very much about a 2022 VW Jetta GLI, ==> https://youtu.be/Offa5ZrjJ8I

[AKROVER]

The car is already covered in dust and dead bugs, but only has about 200 miles so far. Here is a picture from my property in South Dakota. I have no idea why South Dakota uses temporary tags that have to be taped to the windows front and rear rather than the cardboard plates that every other state uses. Hopefully I will get the title soon so I can go get my real plates.

This thing reminds me of my old Audi S4. I like turbocharged engines because they can be very laid back like an economy car and then woken up when desired. Unlike my old Audi, though, this one really is an economy car, averaging about 32 mpg so far. That included a lot of running around in Rapid City. The gearing is a bit steep so it takes a bit longer to wake this one up, but it will clearly run with my old Audi when in the power band. I still haven’t run second gear all the way out to its 75mph redline, but it is clearly a great on-ramp gear. My favorite feature might be the limited slip differential. I was really impressed on the gravel road back to my place. This thing doesn’t demonstrate much of the typical FWD behaviors. I think that LSD will be good in snow, too.

The technology on this car is a bit overwhelming, but slowly I am learning how to access all the features. The owner’s manual is annoyingly generic so there are all these sections that basically start out with “if you have this feature, this is how to access it”. That sometimes leaves me wondering if I don’t have a feature or if I just don’t know how to work it. I think I figured out that the car does have wireless Android Auto, but my phone doesn’t support it. That isn’t a big deal since using Android Auto runs down the phone battery and I need to plug it in anyway, but that will be annoying on short trips.

The trunk is huge. I was able to fit all of our luggage (4 large suitcases plus two backpacks). This is a big reason why I went with a sedan instead of a hatchback. The other big reason is that the back seat is quite a bit bigger in the sedan. This is quieter than the Mazda. The Mazda was annoyingly loud at times. This isn’t a silent luxury car, but it is at least tolerable by my low standards. The engine sounds better, too, although not exactly awesome. The ergonomics are generally good. My only complaint so far is the same as I had in the Mazda initially, no padding for my right knee against the center console. In the long run, that never actually bothered me in the Mazda. I don’t think it will be a problem in the VW either. The ride quality seems the perfect balance between handling and comfort. The car goes where I point it without excessive body roll yet doesn’t rattle my fillings lose over railroad tracks or washboard gravel roads. The car was really inviting me to speed through the curves, but luckily it is still tourist season here so that wasn’t actually possible. I think this is a great all-purpose car, particularly for the purposes I have driving around the Black Hills of South Dakota and taking cross-country road trips.

[Basement Paul]

I liked my Golf. For a small budget friendly car, it never felt cheap and rode and handled really well. But the German engineering was too over the top for me and I most likely won't get another VW. They force you to function a certain way, and if you don't like it, well, that's too bad. Like not being able to lock the driver's door when it's open using the button inside the car. Sorry, you can't do that, we're German. You have to lock it with the remote. Period. That's one small annoyance. But there's lots of them, and the longer you have it, the more silly the things you find are.
The one thing I did like is no tire pressure sensors in the wheels. They handle that with speed sensors on the axles so when you switch to a different set of wheels, there's no screwing around like most other cars.
The problems I had were intermittent, but nothing that ever ended up being a stay at the dealer. Usually just turn the car off and back on and it was fixed. I hope you have the same success with yours. I do like it in white.

Time for some rally style mudflaps though.

-BP

[AKROVER]

The GLI has over 1500 miles now and through five tanks of gas has averaged 33.9 mpg. Today’s fill was over 36mpg. This is about what I was expecting for the mix of driving we have in the Black Hills. Our first road trip is just a week away. I am hoping to get over 40mpg, but certainly not in South Dakota with our 80 mph speed limits. So far, no surprises or disappointments in this car. It rides, drives, and handles nicely. The technology is mostly intuitive and effective. Should get to try it in some snow tomorrow.

[MostMint]

You don't have to drive 80 lol

[GMJohnny]

We don’t have 80 mph speed limits in Ohio, but on my ride to work, there’s no enforcement
of the 65 mph speed limit, so 80 or above isn’t uncommon. I can say that those speeds haven’t
hurt my mileage on the Terrain. It’ll be interesting to see how the freeway helps your mileage.

GM

[AKROVER]

Our first road trip was a little over 1500 miles from Rapid City to Asheville. The GLI averaged 36.6 mpg for the trip which is pretty much the EPA rating of 37. The best tank calculated out to 37.9, a bit short of my hopes for hitting 40. The 80mph leg was at 35.1 mpg so the car is reasonably efficient even at higher speeds. It does appear that the computer in the car reads about 2 mpg high. I had one full day on the trip with the mpg reading 40, but clearly that was not confirmed at the gas pump. I have routinely seen readings in the 40’s for shorter trips which was probably getting my hopes up a little too high. Last week, for example, it read 41 mpg after 65 mostly highway miles. I still think there is hope that the GLI can beat the Mazda’s best tank of 39.6, but probably just barely.

This is the road trip car I was hoping it would be. It is a blast accelerating the on ramps and driving the curves through the mountains, yet it is also efficient and comfortable. The technology is mostly working out for me, although I am still fiddling with the following distance on the adaptive cruise control and have had a couple connectivity glitches with Android Auto. The back seat is good enough that we took my parents on an overnight trip to the casino in Cherokee.

[AKROVER]

Our second road trip was from Asheville to Amelia Island (FL) and back. On the way there, I got 42.6 mpg on a tank that even included a little bit of running around town before we left. The return trip was 39.2 for a trip average of 40.9. The computer seemed to be reading more accurately on this trip. I am happy to see numbers matching my expectation of being able to hit 40. It helps to have lower speed limits and heavier traffic, although neither help my enjoyment of the drive. Technically the trip there had a couple thousand feet of descent helping efficiency, but that was over the course of 390 miles. In South Dakota we have about 2000 feet from our property down to the town of Hot Springs and in that 20 miles, I have seen the trip computer read 47mpg (only mid 30’s in the uphill direction).

My car is no longer new. It got hit in a parking lot on the trip, although I don’t know exactly where or when. The rear bumper cover is slightly deformed on the passenger corner and has a four inch split in it. There are a few minor rub marks in the paint nearby, but the white does a good job of hiding those. Luckily the idiot didn’t contact anything metal or hard plastic. It is just cosmetic but irritating in a new vehicle. I can probably fill or touch up the split to make it less visible. I don’t see myself paying the deductible to get a professional repair.