[Dottore]

My wife had an '03 VW Golf TDI when we lived in Europe, and loved it. Great mileage, lots of power, and trouble free. The six speed manual transmission was also great - though I'm not sure that made it to the North American Jetta's.

One issue: we looked at VW's a couple of years ago again, and noticed a substantial difference in build quality between cars coming from Mexico and those coming from Germany. You could really notice the difference in the VW showroom. The Mexican-built cars looked really cheap and nasty compared to the German-built ones. Not sure this is still the case - but would be worth checking.