I concur with a lot of the above. As a tech i have seen some good Jettas. I have also replaced motors in a few of them personally. Seems there are some real good ones, but some real duds. If your gonna get one, have it checked out thoroughly before you buy (but that should be done for any car your going to buy).

 

i have a 1995 honda odyssey with almost 200k on it, still runs great and i drive the **** out of that thing (knock on wood).

I am sure you could pick up something like that for cheap, mini vans aren't that cool, but maybe and old civic, and you could get a bike with the dough you saved.

 

The modern VW's made in mexico are complete duds. My friend had a 2001 Jetta, that was a complete failure. tranmission problems, brake problems etc if you look in the book they have a terrible reliablity rating(infact it's the worst). not only that, they charge you through the nose to repair. My friend paid 400cnd for a partial tune up. That means they didn't replace the plugs, they didn't replace the wires. Just fine tuned the timming a bit. I forget how much a full tune up was but it was 2x-3x as much.

Honda all the way!!! OR US stuff isn't bad if you get it cheap and plan to drive it into the ground, instead of reselling it.