CAR GAZING
Volkswagen's bright idea
GLI Fahrenheit comes in not-so-mellow yellow
By Derek Price
My four-year-old daughter watched me pull up last Monday in a bright yellow car.
She gave me a big smile and said, "Oh, Daddy, it's beautiful!" She probably thought it was designed to go with her My Little Pony collection.
"No, Miranda," I told her. "It's tacky."
And that sums up the dilemma with this car, the Volkswagen Jetta GLI Fahrenheit edition. It's beautiful in many ways – how it drives, its exclusivity, its pure German feel – but it only comes in one remarkably distasteful color: a bright, electric, arrest-me-and-give-me-the-death-penalty yellow.
Let's start with the good news.
This special, limited edition Jetta actually comes with impressive performance. Some small cars are sold in packages that only look fast, with bright paint colors and skyscrapers for rear wings but no performance upgrade whatsoever. They look like racecars but drive like taxis.
Every one of the 1,200 Fahrenheit GLIs, though, come with a 2.0-liter turbocharged engine that makes 200 horsepower, a huge amount for such a small, lightweight car. A firm, very European feeling suspension – no surprise in a German car – keeps it planted in corners, and your choice of a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission routes all that power to the sticky tires.
I normally hate automatic transmissions in sporty, fun-to-drive cars like the GLI. It's like eating a fine filet mignon on a styrofoam plate. It just ruins the whole experience.
The automatic in this VW, though, isn't like the slow-moving slushbox you'll find in everyday cars. It's called a Direct Shift Gearbox (DSG), and it's an incredibly high-tech, race-inspired piece of machinery that shifts faster and more precisely than any traditional automatic.
Some people may not like its jerkier shifts, but driving purists will appreciate how quickly it responds to input. It's like having the performance of a manual transmission with the convenience of an automatic. And I love it.
But I don't love everything about this car, starting with the color.
I know color choice is completely subjective, and some people probably love driving something that looks like an angry canary that got caught up in a freak nuclear accident. I don't. I think it's good VW decided to limit production on this car because it's not likely more than 1,200 people would want Chernobyl yellow on their Jetta.
Another downside, to me at least, is the cost. Volkswagen is asking $27,880 for a Fahrenheit with a manual transmission or $28,995 with the DSG. This is probably because the value of the dollar, no longer guaranteed with gold, is apparently backed by a pile of rotting compost in New Jersey. Markets in Europe don't want the stinky dollar, so we have to pay a little more for our Land Rovers and Mercedes and Jaguars and, yes, Volkswagens.
Unless you really want a German car, love how the GLI drives or have always dreamed of piloting a giant neon banana, then the Fahrenheit is hard to justify at $29,000.
This is a car for 1,200 diehard VW fans who want to be noticed. And for those special few, it's worth every penny.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.)
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