2007 Volkswagen City Jetta Road Test

Talk about a walk down memory lane. Volkswagen is selling its 2005 Jetta as a new 2007 car in Canada, and Canadians are eating them up. Oh, and the regular Jetta, redone in model year 2006, is also available at a much higher price point. What's going on? It's simple economics, really. Fact is, Canadians are strangled by high taxation (you think U.S. income tax is bad), a high cost of living and exobitant fuel costs (etc, etc), making it so
their purchasing power is much lower than Americans, which translates into a booming subcompact and compact segment, compared to a booming midsize segment in the U.S. VW can't get a car capable of competing in the entry-level league to pass Canada's stringent safety/environmental regulations, so it turned to an old model that it could continue building at a much lower cost, and transfer the savings to the consumer. So, VW ends up with what is arguably the most appealing car in the C-segment, for the price of a Korean or Japanese compact? Yup. All it takes is $16,700 CAD (the equivalent of about $14,200 USD), before freight charges (but then again before a dealer discount) and any Canadian can drive away in a two year old Jetta. Say what? Oh, sorry for the confusion. It’s not a used car or anything, but rather a trusty old design repackaged (read decontented) as an all-new car with a 2007 model year designation, specifically for the Canadian market. Only in Canada, eh? Pity.

The City Jetta isn’t the only car to ever target Canadians over Americans, mind you. Acura put its top-line Civic under the knife and devised the EL, which is now the CSX, while Toyota brought its Echo Hatch from other global markets to be sold in Canada, turning the

Flashback to 2005... the new 2007 City Jetta gets VW into an entirely new entry-level market segment in Canada. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, American Auto Press)

market upside down overnight. Suzuki sells its Swift+ (known in the U.S. as an Aveo5) and Chevy its Korean-made Optima and Epica (Suzuki Forenza, Reno and Verona), just to name a few. It’s also not the first time an outgoing model was dusted off, repackaged and made new again. GM did it for years with the GMC Jimmy, which, after sticking around to fill a gap the much pricier Envoy left open in 2002, left the U.S. market after model year 2004 and soldiered on in Canada for another year. The difference here is that the old Jimmy had stale dated years before GM decided to keep it around for another few years, where the Jetta never really ever started looking old.

In fact, to my eyes it’s more intriguing than the more expensive, much newer 2007 Jetta (the rounder, larger car that has since taken the City Jetta’s place). The newer design is nice, mind you, so don’t try and read in between my lines that I’m saying it’s not a worthy replacement, it’s just that the old car had a more distinctive character that I’m particularly fond of. The vertical headlamps and taillights were way ahead of their time, and the clean, blocky design still appears fresh and current, especially in my tester’s Campanella White paint scheme. Incidentally, VW doesn’t make

The City Jetta is arguably better looking than the current Jetta, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, American Auto Press)

31 flavors available so as to keep the price down, with the only alternative hues for the City Jetta being Black, Spice Red, Shadow Blue, Reflex Silver Metallic and Platinum Gray. No shade of green, purple or orange, bright red, chocolate brown or gold, yellow, fuchsia or pomegranate, cumquat, pineapple, lychee, pink grapefruit… you get the picture. Still, for a bargain basement, entry-level vee-dub, six colors is nothing to sneeze at. Guaranteed that about 33 percent will buy the silver, so if a savvy Canuck were to go white or black he'd be almost original, with the red and blue being positively outside the realm of normalcy… such a radical. The interior, by the way, is anthracite (automotive-speak for gray-black) or anthracite, whichever you like best.

The only way anyone will know that cross-border shopper wandering between legs with a map on his lap is driving an ’07 City Jetta instead of an ’05 Jetta (which was priced thousands higher)is the tiny little “City” badge that sits under the larger “Jetta” script on the rear trunk lid. The way its positioned makes it read “Jetta City”, which is probably the way it was supposed to read before the marketing department made an error in the ad copy and everything had to be changed (OK, that’s pure speculation but it’s fun to spread rumors about marketing screw ups, no?).

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