2006 Volkswagen Jetta/Bora

VW's Jetta has long enjoyed a loyal following among youthful hip urbanites, but that may be changing. A completely redesigned Jetta went on sale last March, and we darned it with faint praise for its comfortable, quiet ride, roomy back seat, and adroit handling, while sharply criticizing its all-new inline-five-cylinder engine for a coarse idle, moaning engine note, and leisurely 8.3-second 0-to-60-mph performance. A turbodiesel variant good for up to 46 mpg and packing 177 pound-feet of torque joined the lineup in May, and a frisky 2.0-liter direct-injected turbo engine shared with the Audi A3 recently went on sale. Either of those engines would undoubtedly have won the Jetta a few more friends among our voting panel than did our 2.5 model.

This car struck us as having strayed off of VW's beaten "Drivers Wanted" path. The steering heft and chassis balance are beyond reproach, but carrying an extra 300-plus pounds relative to its predecessor, this new base Jetta simply doesn't attack a mountain road as enthusiastically as its forebear did. The larger car is much better suited to transporting four full-size adults, and it's still finished in high-grade materials, but there's little innovation to be enjoyed in the interior design or appointments, and the exterior trades bulldog butchness for chrome-nosed dressy formality. It all prompted several editors to bemoan the fact that the new car seems optimized for the German pensioners who constitute the bulk of the home-market audience, which seems sure to alienate the car's Gen-X/Y base here in North America.

Without its formerly perky personality, the Jetta seems a harder sell against the benchmark Asian products in the same size/price category. We still believe the base Jetta models are an attractive buy at below $20,000, but as the options add up, the value equation tilts in favor of Honda or Toyota.