2019 Volkswagen Jetta GLI Channels GTI Better Than Ever
The Tail of the Dragon sits at, or near, the top of any list of great driving roads in America. This 11-mile ribbon of U.S. Highway 129 between Tennessee and North Carolina entices enthusiasts with more than 300 turns and 1,000 feet of elevation change. Unfortunately, it also attracts Harley-Davidson riders out for a cruise, campers trundling along, and bicycle riders peddling away among the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains. This glorious stretch of spaghetti asphalt is often cloaked in fog and soaked with rain, especially on early spring days like this. As I approach the Tail of the Dragon from the north on Foothills Parkway Road, the fog is pea-soup thick. It鈥檚 so thick that my drive partner, a former racer, pulls out his phone to load the local map and call out the turns for me. Between the weather and the moving obstacles, it looks like my drive in the 2019 Volkswagen Jetta GLI could be a bust. With Highway 129 in sight, the fog parts and there鈥檚 not another soul in the area.
Time to ride the Dragon. The road is damp but it鈥檚 not raining. With trees just off the pavement and steep dropoffs, it鈥檚 wise to be cautious, but the GLI offers enough grip in these conditions to have fun, even with its mid-level Hankook tires. 800 upcharge. Even though I鈥檓 a big fan of manual transmissions, the dual-clutch gearbox offers little penalty. It provides quick shifts, and drivers can shift for themselves via tiny plastic paddles on the back of the steering wheel. The new 2.0-liter turbo-4 taken from the GTI delivers an obvious increase in grunt over the outgoing engine. The culprit is torque. While the engine is no bigger than the one it replaces, it produces 228 horsepower, 18 more horses than the last 2.0-liter, and 258 pound-feet of torque, a significant increase of 51 lb-ft. That鈥檚 probably good enough to get the 0-60 mph time down into the mid-to-low 5-second range, though VW isn鈥檛 quoting a time.
Every Jetta GLI has a drive mode selector with Eco, Comfort, Normal, and Sport settings. I鈥檓 running in Sport, which keeps the engine in its power band above 2,500 rpm by holding a lower gear. That helps it pull out of the corners up this mountain pass in the sprint from one turn to the next. The Sport mode has a drawback, though. VW digitally 鈥渆nhances鈥?the engine sounds and sends them through a speaker below the dashboard. The Sport setting brings the engine note forward in the cabin. While the GLI sings a pretty good tune for a 4-cylinder, the constant drone in Sport quickly wears thin. The GLI deftly handles the constant switchbacks, and that鈥檚 a tribute to both its MQB architecture and some smart parts-bin raiding on VW鈥檚 part. The engine comes from the GTI, and so do the steering rack, limited-slip differential, independent rear suspension, and the available adjustable adaptive dampers.
Volkswagen even turned to the Golf R for the GLI鈥檚 front brakes. All these changes鈥攅xcept for the dampers鈥攎ake this a fun drive as the road rises up to meet the sixth-generation GLI. Many of the turns are have a few degrees of camber that help the outside tires dig in for added traction. It would be hard to design a better road for driving fast. While the GLI sharply turns into the endless string of corners, it鈥檚 longer wheelbase makes it less nimble and satisfying than the shorter GTI. That鈥檚 OK because the steering is designed for this kind of work. The variable-ratio steering quickens up as the steering wheel is turned farther off center, which means it requires about two turns lock-to-lock in the tight stuff instead of more than four. That prevents a lot of sawing at the wheel. The Sport mode adds some welcome weight as well. VW鈥檚 limited-slip front differential is also working overtime. The electronically controlled differential has a clutch that can lock the front wheels together in about a tenth of a second. It can also send the power to the outside wheel in a turn to vector torque and improve handling.
