| Friday, November 19, 2004 |
16:29 - Aaauuugh!
http://www.vw.com/itscoming/
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So this is the new Jetta, is it?
Um... ew.
Hmm. I guess it's not that it's an ugly car, so much... it's that it just, well, doesn't look like a Jetta. At all.
The new GTI, which is now on the covers of the various car mags, struck me with how little it resembled the well-proportioned shapes of GTIs and Golfs of old—it's eggy and blobby. But it's a 2-door, and the 2-door Golfs have always been a bit more indistinct in their styling than the 4-door ones. I promised myself I'd reserve judgment.
But... this? Um... no.
One of the reasons why I ran out and bought a '99 Jetta the moment I saw photos of it (after quickly vetting it via the various reviews for obvious deal-killing flaws) was that it had a truly ingenious shape: a slinky and curvaceous outline, without a sharp edge on it, that somehow managed to look like a classic razor-planed 3-box shape had been caught in it, suspended as in a soap bubble. Look at the roofline: it's nearly a dome, with a smooth unbroken curve swooping from trunk to hood. Yet the shapes of the window outlines and door cutouts, with their purposeful utilitarian angles (that are themselves less severe than they look), superimposed on the rounded substrate, are like an 80s Jetta preserved in amber. The car looked futuristic in a purely natural and obvious way, retro without invoking that hackneyed word. I loved it from day one. I still love it.
What, then, of this new thing?
There's no "Jetta" left in it. The angular window elements are gone. The curvy roof is now no longer a stealthy, cheekily aerodynamic carapace over the 80s-style contours, it's now just as confused a surface as the characterless window cutouts. This thing is more Corolla than Jetta—lacking in any personality or tie to its heritage, it seems to have cast its chips on a new direction that severs its ties to the past. Because the Jetta/Golf/GTI is such a venerable bloodline that earned its reputation back in its earliest, scrappiest days, this could well be a fatal error for VW.
We are not pleased, precious, oh no.
Via InstaPundit, whose linking to this page renders laughable any supposed attempt by VW to keep it "hush-hush"...
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Brian Tiemann
