This week Mike tests the 2020 Jetta GLI and compares it against an Audi A3.
Hello internet world and welcome back to the channel today i’m gonna focus on the gli but i do want to bring a little point about the a3 in this video so when comparing both cars why would i bring an a3 front-wheel drive in the picture and that is price when someone’s looking for in gli they’re never thinking about a front-wheel drive a3 they’re thinking about
An s3 or possibly an a3 quattro however from a cost perspective the a3 and the gli are pretty much on par up here in canada in the us you guys are lucky this has a starting price of about $26,000 whereas this car has a starting price for $33,000 why the difference well in the us they come with a lot less equipment up than up here in canada not only that the gli
Comes in stick or manual whatever you like to call it but it doesn’t come in an a3 which is a shame but that is the reason why they built the gli i just found it really interesting that the a3 in canada is thirty four and a half thousand dollars but in the u.s. is $33,000 that’s a spread of about fifteen hundred dollars from cost from the u.s. to canada but
For the gli i know comes less equipment but the spread is huge for the a3 at this price point makes 184 horsepower and 222 foot-pounds of torque the gli makes 228 horsepower and 258 foot-pounds of torque out of this 2-liter engine which you guessed it which is the same engine out of the a3 quattro when it comes to price i board this car from the fine guys over
Adama motors right here in lund ontario make sure to visit their website and shop at their gl eyes so right here in pure gray as i said the canadian version doesn’t have the autobahn edition they just have one specific one with the tech package you can add to that this car has that tech package so on the front here we’ve got led standard we’ve got a honeycomb
Grille with the red accent running through the front of the grill as well as they have this upper black valence that’s in piano black it’s nice because it actually matches all the black in the car and it’s not color coded like the arty on in the rto nose white but in this specific case it’s black all the way through first downfall got a welcome arm is out this
Hood is heavy one of the neat things about this new gli is they’ve put in a mechanical lsd which is a mechanical slip differential and what that essentially means is that when one wheel starts to slip it transfers power to the other wheel so they move the exact same rotation versus in the a3 when that happens it applies brakes to the wheels that slip so in this
Case this is more of a proactive system whereas the a3 as proactive as it is it’s a little bit more reactive than what the system brings to you one of the biggest roadblocks i see with people buying a gti or gli is insurance the demographics of people that buy the gli or gti are generally male and a generally younger however the a3 doesn’t have that the people
That buy the a3 want more luxury they probably won’t drive as fast and even though they share the same engines the quattro version the insurance is the difference maker or at least we think i shopped insurance with three different companies and i got quotes of about $3 differences between a gli and an a3 front-wheel drive and that blew my mind away i was always
On the assumption the gti is and geol eyes were more expensive insurance but that is actually not factually true i’m not huge into four-door sedans but the effects of this car is actually very clean-looking so a lot of cars i see today have a lot of extra plastic on the outside no i know there’s a lot of write-ups on the internet about the plastic on the inside
This car and i’ll get to that in a minute but in the outside this car the design is very sleek there’s a single shoulder line that goes all the way back there’s a slight dynamic line that’s just above that that pulls the way through right to the edge of the seam here another piece i do like is i like the fact that they’re actually color-coded mirrors and the
Sunroof actually plays all the way back here in glass like the a3 s now i know it’s unfair to compare a car that’s built in germany to a car that’s built in mexico however there are some pieces that volkswagen /od did put and that is the way this door closes this door closes like an audi i’ve got to say it guys this thing silikal is like a volkswagen in the back
Now everyone’s gonna start hating on the bottom no that’s not true there’s an audi and there’s a volkswagen but they’re the same company i get it they’re the same company but there’s less quality materials put in certain products and higher quality materials put in out he products that’s differentiation i was talking about when i looked at i’m like men i’m like
This this side profile right here kinda looks like a camry okay but here hold on but here looks exactly very similar to an a4 it’s very out of right here i mean obviously the rear valence the exhaust pipes is very a3 like this broad shoulder in the back looks very similar to an a4 this trunk is 50% bigger than an a3 quattro and 60% bigger than a front-wheel drive
A3 and that’s because the rear axle is not there however i just think that this sill needs to be on the plate or they should just recess these bumpers in a little bit this is just gonna get so beat up and i know they sell products you can put on here but then why have a sill plate that doesn’t extend here so that’s my only real complaint about accessing inside
And outside the truck but this trunk is huge there’s a lot of space golf clubs can easily fit in this car so there’s some cost-cutting i see right here and that is this back shelf panel as well as some of the lock pieces and the carpet all the way through i’m just not a big fan of this carpet material i just find the audi’s do a better job of this type of quality
In the carpet now obviously i can pick and be picky about it but it’s not only that it’s when i pull this down it’s a little bit hard and then it’s really easy all of a sudden so i know it’s because the weight and i just don’t like the fact these are exposed in the audi they’d actually do have little shock absorbers right here that holds it up versus this is just
Pretty normal for an economy car i get it can’t complain i got a really neat fact about the gl eyes and that was the g lies were actually built first and then they based the jetta off the gli so it’s not like they built the jetta first and then made the gli they actually constructed the gli first and then built the new jetta off that process and that i got from
The guys at dummy 3 things i like about the back of this car is the color coded spoiler the rear valence and the real exhaust tips so in the a3 is you have a little hanger where you can hang down and you can have have groceries hang but you don’t have that in the gli however in the gli you do have levers or there that fold the back seats down which you don’t
Have in the a3 so there are still some german pieces in this card at the door hinges our german piece the back seats they do have great support i really do like all the stitching in it i mean the stitching the do a good job it falls all the way from the front seats goes all the way through the back around the headdress and also on the carpet i don’t how many
Viewers actually sit in the back seats of their vehicles however my child does and heated seats it’s important and you can’t get that in an a3 so i measure the seat in the back here and this headroom is identical to the back of an a3 however it is a little bit wider here’s a weird thing in the back seat the driver’s seat doesn’t have a pocket to put anything in
But in the passenger seat it does so i guess the people behind here don’t sit behind here or the guy driving is like 7 feet tall and needs all the space you can get another really cool part about the gli is remote start having remote start just makes the difference in colder climates or even warmer climates you either want your car to cool when you get in or hot
When you get in because having a freezing cold car sucks alright so as i sit in this car now i can tell you and i read a lot about this car before i got it and a lot of hate was directed to plastic panels in the car and yes there’s a lot of plastic but let’s not talk about the door panels let’s talk about when you’re in the car these seats are comfortable they
Do have heated and cooled which is the outage you can’t get in an a3 in that in that model that we talked about it does have an awesome steering wheel which it did pull from a gti so gti and gl have the same steering wheel and the steering wheel is awesome so from a driver’s perspective i get in the car the dash is faced towards me the steering wheel has most
The buttons i need yeah it does have the the paddles and the paddles are not cheap they actually do press them they feel good quality my pedals you know as you know is they are from an audi product these pedals are audi the seats they are better than a cut regular a3 now you can get a sports seat in a 3 and it’s similar to this the difference in a sport a3 is
The headrest you actually move forward and backwards this one just goes up and down this does have the armrest the rms is not on par with these do have a better armrest they have softer padding as well as a height adjustment there is this little plastic piece you can pull down to set it a little bit higher which i kind of get it if you’re if you’re theoretically
Breaking hard the audis can slide forward under intense braking so this one doesn’t move anywhere so i kind of get it this sunroof they call it rail to rail or rail by rail or something about a rail when i’m closing this it’s very loud very easy in the beginning and then all of a sudden gets really hard right about here so yeah cuz it’s all a lot more storage
Than the audi is for sure i mean a lot more storage from the audi and certain things are more toys so the audi standard for that price point it’s a manual rear view mirror whereas this one is automatic you know gonna touch enough and you get the wireless charging on your phone obviously dual climate control that’s all kind of the same thing tech is exactly same
As the audi’s there’s no difference at that price point but i think the real neat point here is gonna be the drive the drive is really gonna make the difference so this is being really picky here the voice activation is not up to today’s standards because there’s a hit voice and i say stuff like find a restaurant please repeat find a restaurant you can also
Always say back restart voice operation help cancel voice operation so some of the newer ones have smart voice and they understand if you say find a chinese restaurant take me to a gas station we’re not there yet with this gli voice operation paused so we’ll just stick to apple carplay or android auto so just a funny thing here the hvac controls when you put
Them on dual climate controls on both sides the numbers are the perfect size they’re not too big they’re not too small but when you shut it off just the way that the just the way the pixels look here it’s big oh big f and then little big f so it’s off so just a piece to sort of finish off the interior is i hope that volkswagen does in the next gli and gti is
The start/stop button should have a red ring around it i will complete it yeah sure you can have some red pieces around here but just the start/stop button is like that’s the passion and endurance that we car guys want to feel when you buy something like this and press the button push down the red button and she starts that’s we want to hear i mean you plumbed
In sound so let’s just put a red ring around here so you can custom change it you can change your to have sport your dcc or suspension to have normal sport your steering sport as this cars progressive steering and it has a full adjustable in theory has a dynamic suspension so you can make it bumpy or or softer as you drive across the road but i’ll get in that
When i’m driving you’ve got a front diff lock these are really cool features so i’m okay with not having an insulated trunk i’m okay with plasticky door panels but this is the type of stuff that a car guys gonna eat up all right so we’re taking the gli for a drive now and i’ve got it in sport mode and when i went from normal to sport the rpms raised a little bit
To suspensions gonna tighten up because it says damping suspension yeah it’s got roll bars in the front so i’m excited to kind of so it’s good oh yeah she flies god haven’t had a smile and well this is definitely way more fun to drive in the rt on i just drove alright so i’m in sport dynamic and let’s hear how the sounds here full throttle sounds good that’s
Just it’s just so median throaty but the crazy part about it is it’s not real but it’s sucking me in like it’s real so drake the sound in this car is not real like that noise that they’re hearing of the exhaust is not real there’s a speaker in the car that makes that noise so like this noise you hearing it’s not real so it’s like everybody else doesn’t hear
It outside the car but you inside the car you get excited with that noise because that noise does bring some adrenaline with you know in your system even though you’ve never heard it before so it’s kind of cool actually it’s funny it just how does it how do you explain okay so jake do you remember how like you loved gummies but then once i told you that gummies
Were made out of out of beef stomach or whatever you just felt a little bit funny about that those gummies right so that’s kind of how i feel about this sound like i love the fact that it’s there so you love the fact that you like the way taste the gummies but the fact that you know that it’s not real just just or the fact that you know that the gummies are not
What do you think they are it changes your mind a little bit about it right but that when you eat the gum is you’re like oh that’s cool cool the gummies but now you’re like so that’s exactly about the sound i’m like i love the sound but just knowing that it’s not real just sort of hinders my thoughts so when i put over a manual mode and it goes first a second it
Automatically up shifts so i don’t touch anything and an automatic goes from first a second so that nope so it doesn’t bounce off the rev limiter now there’s a lot of hate online about it but here’s the deal anybody actually is a peer enthusiasts will probably most likely buy a stick anyways so does it really matter that options for you yeah it’s kind of annoying
You should be able to hold the gear but is it a deal breaker not really to be honest so it does have started stuff the start stuff is a bit jerky to be honest yes it’s really jerky like the initial to go to drive i feel like this they set the idle speed in terms of movement a little bit too high cuz who’s like well the brake county this push there’s one complaint
It’s roomy i like the fact that the front end sort of feels like a gti but the back end i know that i got space for the family so it’s like party on the front business in the back or business on the front party in the back and something like that i’m not sure which one depends on heydays going yes feels good it is a really good zippy fun car i mean you got to think
This is this is an affordable dream car for a lot of guys i mean it’s affordable it’s roomy it’s fully tunable you can get it in stick i mean the fact you get this car in manual is awesome i mean that’s that is like a dying breed i mean you can’t get a supercar and stick i mean there’s there’s a portion that you can but most supercars all now come in automatic or
Dsg or some sort of super intial gearbox but the fact you can get this in manual you can tune it you can fit the family in it’s got a big trunk look it averages 40 miles and look you know it can get 40 miles per gallon i mean the fact of all that put together and it’s priced in the states at $26,000 i mean i don’t know how you can beat that number it’s it’s it’s
Mind-boggling and you get cool colors you can’t you can’t just get white or black you know you can get this great which is amazing to know that they offer this kind of stuff in from om you got warranty so that all that put together makes it a pretty unique package just sounds so okay if the ships are very fast and crisp it just sounds so good and the downshift
Yeah they’re on their sharp so hit the button it goes down it waits with it i would say that the shifts the down shifts take a program to be a little bit tighter when you hit it it kind of weights it only sort of engages when the engines about 4,000 4,500 rpm when you know it can like some of the more performance secured cars get down to about 6,000 rpm so this
One sort of is a little bit conservative but tuning can can fix that as far as overseer understeer i don’t really have full role to test it out but i would say if you change the tires which is one of our big recommendations on this car that’ll totally help that but in terms of feel the car doesn’t feel big the sound is really engaging so i mean i would say that
Without the sound this would be a lot less engaging i would say for sure that the sound is required at this stage now that i’ve driven this thing for a while so i’m gonna try this now in comfort mode and see how this sounds like or an eco mode and see how this sound so yeah so throw all the same input that the sub didn’t sound is gone under normal load here yeah
It’s gone so it feels like a normal car now so it’s kind of neat that you can put it on you can put it off so yeah there’s a big difference in driving an eco and driving it in sport and eco it feels like a regular jetta but in sport all of a sudden it wakes up and you get the sound in there you hit it there we go it’s coming back now it’s wakening up coming
Alive alright guys thanks for watching this video on this 2020 gli i hope you liked it i like the fact that you get sportiness you get power you get miles per gallon and you get price that is the most important thing right here is the fact that you can get price but in a six-speed i know this wasn’t a six-speed but the fact you can get in a six-speed that’s a
Dying breed and you can tune it i mean how can you go wrong so guys take a look at the all-new 2020 gli
Transcribed from video
2020 Volkswagen Jetta GLI | Better Than An Audi A3? By ACCELER8