- The first quarter of 2020 has been a
little bit of a dumpster fire, okay?
Every month there's been something major
that's happened and has just left you, like,
thinking to yourself,
"Well gosh darn it, bud,
that's no good," you know?
But the good news is,
I got my wife's cat lover coffee cup
with me and that's pretty good.
I remember when we thought 2016 was a tough year,
which was pretty much just like
a free-to-play version of 2020.
Hot dog, it's pretty terrible.
By the way, thank you for the coffee,
Loyal Coffee, I love you.
And while the rest of the world is learning things
that were taught in kindergarten,
like washing your hands and not touching your face,
we're just over here waiting for people
to let us do cool, vroom, vroom things.
Okay, and I want to go vroom vroom with all of my friends.
I'm Alex, alex.fi on Instagram
and today we're going to be talking
about the large french fry order
when you're not sure if you're hungry car.
The Dr. Pepper of the modification community.
The car that has been able to do
pretty much anything we've ever wanted
besides go super super fast and has
left us a few bucks in the wallet
to get us Red Robin every once and a while.
Ladies and gentlemen, today were going to be talking about
the one, the only, the Volkswagen Jetta.
(upbeat techno music)
And if you're just jumping into this video, hiya.
Don't forget to subscribe and (stutters)
it's a super low commitment we promise.
It helps us to keep making bangers
and we promise not to make you sad with an upload.
And if you're looking for aftermarket ruedas,
that's actually wheels in Spanish,
learned that one off Google Translate,
tires or suspension,
be sure to hit us up over at fitmentindustries.com
where we literally have everything
you could possibly imagine.
Now if you are still stuck at home,
you still haven't started working on your build,
I'mma need you to go do that right now.
But if you do not finish your car
during a time when you are forced to be home,
I have some bad new for you, bud.
You ain't gonna finish it.
'Kay?
The Volkswagen Jetta was "geborgened".
That's "birthed" in German.
In 1979, it actually wasn't much more than
a Volkswagen Golf with a trunk.
It's goal was to essentially grow the
Volkswagen options in the marketplace while
still providing consumers with something that
the Golf didn't have.
A trunk.
The Jetta, named after the good old
Atlantic Jet Stream,
wasn't really an innovation.
It didn't have any sort of groundbreaking design.
In fact, it was actually pretty simple.
It was like cheating off your best friend's homework.
You see, in the 70s, while people didn't mind the Golf,
some folks didn't like the hatchback,
non-saloon style, weird bullying,
bubbling looking thing.
You know, they're like, those guys took our jobs.
You know like that (clears throat)
Oh, God, Horse.
So, Volkswagen being Volkswagen,
literally just looked at the successful Golf
and said, "Well, like, what if we, what if we,
I mean, what if we just added a trunk?"
The crowd got (beep) wild, okay?
The Jetta became an instant success and
one of the bestselling European cars in
the United States, Canada, and Mexico, baby.
Absolutely (beep) wild.
You gotta imagine that the Volkswagen
engineers were just like, "All day, baby, all day.
We threw a trunk on it.
Bing bang boom.
We're done.
Gimme a raise."
The Jetta would go through its first two generations
not really changing too much,
just added more space,
a little bit more technology and
of course more squares since it was the mid-80s
and the United States just had a thing for squares.
But North American market really loved it,
I mean, there was nothing really wrong with it.
The designing actually came from somebody named
Georgietto Giugiaro (stutters)
Georgie. Georgie.
- S.S. Georgie underway!
- Okay, the dude did pretty good.
These cars were starting to be built fairly well, too,
which was something that did plague
Volkswagen back in the day.
They started introducing more robotics and
auto manufacturing systems to pretty much
prevent them from screwing up and
really started to play a heavy
role in Volkswagen's manufacturing process.
As the third generation entered the world,
this is where quite a few people like you and
people like me start to really
remember the Volkswagen Jetta.
The car was Volkswagen's saving grace in the 90s
because otherwise Volkswagen wasn't going to
have a good enough plant to even produce a damn
car for the North American market.
The third generation, despite the legendary mission
it was on in the third generation for Volkswagen,
ended up pulling out and pulling through with
making the MK3 Jetta successful NNA unlike TSM.
You gotta get it together.
But the MK3 had some interesting things that
enthusiasts and commuters wanted.
It just had good stuff.
It had a 2.8 liter BR6 motor for the vroom vroom community,
and a 1.9 liter turbo diesel for the "holy (beep)
you get what for gas mileage?" community.
I mean, it worked really well.
The VR6 was the same engine that powered
the Corrado Hatch at the time and
this was especially something because it allowed
people to jump into a semi-performance vehicle
without necessarily having to dish out cash for
a BMW or an Audi which was pretty much
the only direction you could go.
On top of that,
throw an exhaust on a VR6 and
it sounds like a damn 911.
It is an insanely good noise and if you've never heard
a VR6 with an aftermarket exhaust,
you're missing out on life, okay?
But it still had the reliability and maintenance
costs of a Volkswagen which made it just fantastic.
Stop judging my couch.
The fourth generation would likely get the second
most amount of love by enthusiasts coming in the
two point slow version,
a 1.8 turbo version which desperately
needs a blow off valve the moment you buy it,
and the iconic VR6 model,
the V-dub Jetta continued to just produce.
Just produce and produce and produce.
Like a rabbit, all right?
But automotive enthusiasts really started to
jump into these things because turbos meant tunes.
(car revs and backfires)
- [Man] Oh my gosh!
- Small cars meant fun driving experiences and
more affordable meant easier to jump into and
rip 'er up and down the street at a younger age.
And because it had more space,
more doors and a trunk,
all of a sudden that meant that
parents were like, "You wanna know what son or daughter?
That's a good purchase, don't worry about it."
As the fifth and sixth generation
came in and out of the world,
one thing continued to be the same
for the Volkswagen Jetta.
It was the fact that they wanted
everyone to own one of these.
It was the Volkswagen version of a Corolla,
a Camry, even like its own Beetle.
And it worked because the cars were easy to get ahold of.
They were absolutely everywhere.
They were low maintenance.
All the good stuff that you'd want out of a car,
if you were just a normal Joe or Jane looking for
something to drive.
And people like you and people
like me would pick them up,
play around with them a little,
turn them into dailies,
and then throw some BBS's on 'em,
a blow-off valve, and of course,
an exhaust.
Now, the sixth generation got big and got
even bigger and more for the everyday person.
And now eight-ish years of this generation
have been out and then they came with the same
19 million trims a Volkswagen usually always falls for.
And that is, that's Volkswagen, baby.
All the trims.
Everything you could want, they got it.
But we're not here to talk about
the history of the Volkswagen Jetta.
If you want that, you can just go
pick up the books at the Advanced Auto Store.
It's like aisle 7 where it has all the repair information.
You end up using it once and then you never touch
it again but you pack it six or seven times 'cause
you never know when you're gonna use it again.
I just went through that.
No, we're here to talk about you wanting
to own one of these bad boys.
So you want a Volkswagen Jetta.
Well, set down your forge blow off valve and
grab your favorite OBD2 scanner.
We're gonna talk about what it's like to
actually own one of these CEL happy boys, okay?
The Volkswagen Jetta is a car that
pretty much anyone could own and modify.
They look good, they have space,
and they've been around for like 27 decades.
If you're lookin' to modify a car for the first time,
first time virgin modifier, all right?
A Jetta is a good pickup.
Now, the earlier generations are super cheap,
especially the third generation.
And you can usually find one for pretty decent price,
only like a couple two, three thousand dollars.
Now these cars generally end up being someone's
first car or first modified car right out of the gate.
For the older folk,
the 2010 to 2019 our most recent generation,
was fantastically well-received by the community.
Now, of course, just like all VWs,
there's always a few quirks that you may want to
be aware of before scooping one up.
The first generations are pretty much just Golfs in
my opinion so just get the Golf if you
want an old school VW 'cause those things slap.
The second generations are cool.
They have the period-correctness potential
and aren't too shabby to drive around in but
for the price of a newer one,
you can usually end up buying one of
those because you want to,
not because the budget won't allow
you to get a newer one.
You'll wanna be careful with the rust though,
because once it catches onto these older generations,
it's worse than a clingy high school fling and
I'm telling you that because I love you, okay?
Trust me on this one.
Volkswagens, especially the Jettas,
the older generations, once rust grabs on
she just don't let go, champ.
The VR6 models are always worth it if you can
snag one without rust as they combine a good
chunk of what makes these cars so awesome with
an interesting motor.
Did I actually spell (beep)?
And they're also fun to listen to.
They have a whole bunch of fun, weird, quirky
things about the VR6 that just makes it
fun to drive and love.
And if you've ever actually driven one,
you'll understand what I'm talking about.
But one of the things that you will need with
Volkswagen Jettas is patience.
Jettas are cars people can modify
and they can handle it.
But they can get a little bit finicky,
so you wanna make sure that if you're buying one,
it just doesn't have electrical tape
over the check engine light.
Most Jettas will either run a BC coilover setup or,
if it's an older build, ST or KW.
Now, air suspension is extremely popular on
the sixth gen because they lay a frame quite well.
Now in terms of wheels and tires,
almost everything is narrow on these cars, well,
because that's just how Volkswagen do, okay?
Now, the reason is is simply because this
car's goal was to have good gas mileage and
lots of space so they didn't really waste
any space in empty wheel wells.
So, you're gonna see most people run 8 and a half wides
on 215s or 225s and that's an extremely
common setup for most recent generations.
Now, you can get a little bit bigger in the
older generations but people usually don't.
You're gonna end up usually running like BBSs.
Theses cars have been around for so long
that they almost always have a problem with
one generation or another like there's so many
generations out there that it's impossible for
you to not have some sort of issue per generation.
Now, when you're going out and you're
looking at which one you want,
you're gonna wanna make sure that you're
doing specific research,
not just on the generation that you're
looking for but the trim as well.
Now Volkswagens do a fantastic job at staying alive,
especially the diesel ones,
but the VR6s can be a bit finicky and I know that
the check engine light,
although an iconic joke,
is extremely common and why they kinda
carry a bad rap every once in a while.
So if you're lookin' to pick one up,
you're gonna wanna make sure that
you get the maintenance done right.
And if you are buying it,
just remember who you're buying it from because
a lot of these cars usually sit in the hands of
16 to 19 year olds because they are their first car.
Now you just gotta be okay with that.
But hey, they get good gas mileage,
they look pretty decent,
they aren't too expensive,
and they ain't too quick.
But they love makin' you cry because the O2 sensors,
and the wagon's got booty for days.
So in terms of what you get,
you can get pretty much anything you want
out of a Jetta depending on the trim, generation,
and like thing that you wanna do to it.
So what do you think about the Volkswagen Jetta?
Drop your comment below and of course let us know
what you'd like us to talk about next.
To those still asking for tips on girlfriends,
I highly recommend showing them your
recon helmet in Halo 3, it worked for me.
I don't know what else to tell you.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
We hope you enjoyed, we will see you later.
Peace!