Basically a Golf wagon, the Jetta SportWagen has a quiet, taut, and composed ride and responsive handling, in sharp contrast to the newer sedan. Acceleration is a bit leisurely with the diesel, but it has strong mid-range thrust. We got an outstanding 36 mpg overall and 49 mpg on the highway with the manual transmission. The 2.5-liter version returned 23 mpg overall. The automated manual works well but gets slightly worse mileage. The high-quality interior packs a lot of usable space into a modest footprint. Reliability of the five-cylinder and diesel has been average or better.
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