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Kings Red shines on 2025 VW Jetta SEL -- a near-perfect compact sedan. Photo by John Gilbert.

Consumers have shown a clear preference for migrating to SUVs, and manufacturers have curtailed or dropped a lot of their cars to build more SUVs to accommodate the demand. 

But there remains room for cars, especially the best cars, and this week I’ve  had the opportunity to drive and live with one of the best and most familiar cars on the planet.

It is the 2025 Volkswagen Jetta SEL.

A few years ago, Volkswagen changed the Jetta from being a larger and longer version of the compact Golf, and lowered the Jetta’s price to make it fit into family budgets better. 

Time passes, and one of the most impressive things Volkswagen has done in  the last decade is continue to build the best parts of the Golf and Jetta, and also continue to improve on its technology.

For what seems like all of history, VW has built a very strong, very dependable 2.0-liter 4-cylinder, right there next to the 1.8-liter 4-cylinder. 

But a VW engineer told me about a new engine the company had built that might take over the majority of the company’s engine assignments — it was a 1.6-liter 4-cylinder, small by anyone’s standards, but with the highest of high-tech ingredients.

When I climbed in the new 2025 Jetta, in its Kings Red glory, my first drive made me assume this was the 2.0 upgraded from its GTI days. 

I was wrong. It was the 1.5-liter 4, with dual overhead camshafts and powering the front wheels through an 8-speed automatic transmission. I was fooled, because the Jetta had excellent power and quickness and zapped into traffic as swiftly as you could want.

It also handled well, with agility and without argument. Front-wheel drive is pretty much the standard for the world’s drivetrains these days, although a lot of us have veered over toward the all-wheel-drive of compact SUVs because they offer such advantages in foul or wintry weather. Nothing beats AWD in snow or on ice.

However, a well-balanced compact car with front-wheel drive and the right tires can get you home through the worst snow storms and will do it dutifully and with full security. 

The Jetta, fully loaded with features and just about the way we’d buy it, listed for $30,680. That includes the new engine upgrade and the other 2025 improvements, slight or otherwise.

My wife, Joan, has become enamored with compact SUVs and AWD, but when she got behind the wheel of the new Jetta, right after we got our first dose of a snowstorm in Duluth, she came home and said, “I love this car. I want it.”

She has said that before in only a few cases, but to back it up, we went for a day trip from Duluth the Minneapolis and back on Thursday, and she drove most of the way home after I had driven us the two hours down there. 

Time for a bit of Christmas shopping, and just the convenience of seeking out some larger stores.

Fundamentally, here’s where the Jetta impressed us most. I dug out the statistics for that car with that drivetrain, and it showed EPA fuel economy statistics of 29 in city driving and 40 on sustained highway driving, for a composite average of 33 mpg. 

On our drive, we drove a total of 450 miles, and the car delivered 38.7 miles per gallon! 

Later, after filling the tank, I checked it again and found 38.5 in almost exclusive city driving. Pretty consistent. And impressive.

Doubly impressive was that when you pop open the filler door, it instructs you to put unleaded regular gasoline into the tank. Because regular is right now about 60 cents per gallon less expensive, I was very happy to accept those rules.

The Jetta has also proved that by staying pretty much with the same basic platform and style, the car could be built to surprising tightness and delivers a feeling of total security and agility as you put it through its paces.

We hit 18-below zero one night, with a wind-chill factor of minus 38, and on those days, believe me, we appreciated several features of the Jetta, such as remote start. Lock the car from 100 feet away with the key fob, then tap the right button twice and the Jetta starts itself. Let it run for a couple minutes, then hustle out there and find the luxury of the heater and defroster already hard at work.

The seat heaters also have several settings, and they work quickly and warm you up to the point where you’re backing off to a milder setting after a very few miles. 

Same with the steering wheel, which has another switch on the steering wheel that allows you to turn its heater on or off without summoning up the whole climate menu on the info screen. 

We didn’t have anyone sitting in the back seat during our week, which is too bad, because the rear bench seat is not only a split-folding deal, but it also is heated. The driver seat is both heated and cooled, by the way.

The Vienna leather on the seats is a nice touch, and the seats themselves are firm and supportive, which encourages you to climb into them more often. The Beats premium sound system worked well and we enjoyed listening to an NFL game on satellite radio on our way home.

The more important safety features are all in place, from the blindspot to lane departure warning, to front and rear sensors to alert you when you might be a little careless parking, and the attention to detail for the traction and stability control. We never slithered even once in the snow with the FWD on the car and we always felt in total control.

That allowed us to check out some of the other refinements, such as the LED headlights and driving lights, the automatic high beams, and a neat little feature: the interior ambient lighting strip that offers an accent throughout the interior can be adjusted to any of many colors. We liked most of them, and we settled on orange, because it seemed to add a warm aspect in our chilly week.