I guess I am now a member of the TDI cult, having just purchased a 2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. Surprisingly, the deal was extremely easy to make with a discount from MSRP and a good trade-in for my Outback. I have filled it with fuel just once with 32 mpg, all around town mostly by my wife.
It is a fun car to drive with power to spare, rides extremely well, relatively quiet (tires are second rate), and handles like a sports car. Fit and finish are first rate, even the "leatherette" seats.
The exhaust system is complex and can be damaged if not operated correctly. This would be very costly I suspect. However, all it requires is periodic operation at temperature and held above 38 mph for 10 minutes. This is supposed to occur every few tanks of fuel and happens at the direction of the computer. If you screw up it informs you according to the manual and a mechanic has then to induce this with a VAG diagnostic machine. After some thought I decided it could be handled.
It also has somewhat different behavior starting from a full stop. There is no torque converter in the AT so applying heavy throttle immediately produces somewhat startling results. Since it is turbo charged, there is a slight, almost un-noticable lag. Between the two, it sort of pauses momentarily and takes off with a bang. Scared my wife the first time she drove it. For more normal takeoffs, one has to lightly apply the throttle until it just starts to move and then go as fast, or as slow, as one wants. It takes longer to explain than to learn and once this quirk is mastered it drives like anything else. I don't know what the 0-60 is, but 0-30 is really fast.
For $27,000, it is a great vehicle and fits nicely in even a tight garage. On the highway at 75 mph it really feels like a much bigger car and I read that one guy drove his 130 mph and would have gone faster except for the speed limiter.
