The first time I saw that commercial I jumped two feet off the couch. I was kind of sleepy and it startled the crap out of me. Now it’s just annoying, but not nearly as bad as the German Engineer Guy From The Big Lebowski “Un Pimping Ze Auto”, so go ahead and keep crashing those babbling cretins into that pickup truck.
What sticks in my mind is “VW and accidents”. Yeah, that’s not their intended message, but it’s the impression I take away from the ad campaign. Associating a product with a tramatic experience is risky, even if they later say the product will protect the user. The visceral depiction of the trama will tend to override any reassuring words.
The ads with the guard rail being deformed, yet the car remaining safe, is a much more effective visual.
Umm…don’t these VW ads have the cars being deformed and the people remaining safe?
I know what I’d prefer.
-Joe
I wonder how much of these collisions are special effects? They seem very realistic to me.
I had a '97 Jetta for about five years. It worked well enough for me, but I got rid of it at around 100,000 miles. It started breaking down, one piece at a time, starting with the dashboard indications.
One more thumbs up for the current campaign. It scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it, and I continue to find the imagery very disturbing, but that’s because it’s so realistic. I think the commercials are well done and get their point across swimmingly.
Sgt Schwartz, if the VW commercial showed the people in the other vehicle involved in these accidents maimed or dead, I’d say you had a point. As is, I don’t think these commercials are a reason to keep you from buying their car. I think getting the visuals provided in this campaign are far more effective than, say, a Volvo commercial that mentions a four-star crash safety rating. No accident I’ve been in ever looked like one of the slow-motion dummy-laden shots in the commercials that show crash tests. These VW commercials look like accidents I’ve been in or seen. That, to me, speaks volumes.
But to each his or her own.
Amusingly, this commercial made me think that the typical Beemer driver’s attitude must be that the rest of the world could go to hell, as long as his car stayed shiny and unscratched.
Consumer Reports just released their 2006 Car Buyer’s Guide. Might be worth your while to go grab a copy at the library or off their website ($ subscription req’d).
If you’re going to get a VW, go for the price-similar Honda or Toyota. Same safety, better reliability.
My $0.02,
-Cem
Isn’t that the criticism leveled at SUV owners? They don’t care who they kill, as long as they’re ok. Weren’t the insurance companies talking about raising the premiums on SUVs for just that reason?
By that reasoning, wouldn’t people avoid buying those large pick-up trucks & SUVs which seem to always end up in natural disasters? Yikes! If I buy one of those, I’m going to end up driving through forest fires, forging across flooded streams, and driving up the sides of mountains during blizzards all the while dodging avalanches? Talk about stress! 
I did find the commercial powerful and a tad disturbing. But I have spent long hours on the scenes of fatality accidents and it’s refreshing to see a car being sold on its safety merits.
Of course, I also bought a Jetta TDI (prior to seeing the commercial) and the safety features were one of the main reasons. I have a 16- year-old driver in the house and I’m not naive enough to figure she’ll never be in an accident. I just pray she walks away from them and hopefully the Jetta will help with that.
I’m going to have to agree with you on this one. With the impecable track records of Toyota and Honda I’m still often left scratching my head as to why someone would buy a different make. Handling, safety, reliability, craftmanship, resell value, etc.
Ego makes someone buy a Jetta. Common sense makes someone buy a Civic/Corolla.
What exactly does ego have to do with buying a Jetta? Do pontificate.
It was very lucky it was still on full insurance instead of just liability=) I had made the last payment on it less than 2 months before 
The way I look at it, it was designed to be survivable at autobahn speed accidents, which have the possibility for being pretty nasty. The body panels may go sproink, but the body cage did him good. Only compressed the roof in where the car bounced on it a couple of inches [over where mrAru’s head was] and the damage to his arm was done because his arm got pushed against the window and it broke when it hit the pavement.
Sorry, don’t mean to be snarky. But, I don’t understand why when comparing the 3 side-by-side someone would go with a Jetta. The only reason I could think of was they just like the idea of owning a “European” or “German Engineered” vehicle. Or perhaps they like the look of it better?
When I look at reliability rating in consumer report for a Jetta and all I see are black dots and half black dots I wonder “do the owners not care about this stuff? do they look past it and say ‘I don’t care, I just have to have a VW’.”
Same goes for something like the new Pontiac G6 convertable starting at $28K.
I think to myself “holy crap, do they know they’re buying a Pontiac?”
Who would pay $28K for a Pontiac?
Point taken, but I don’t really think it’s an ego thing. There are a lot of folks, myself included, who just think that Hondas and Toyotas are pretty dull-looking cars.
Perhaps there is some partial ego involved in the sense that a lot of people have an “Oh, but that won’t happen to me” attitude. For example, a lot of people warned us about VW’s problems with falling windows, as was cited by minor7flat5 and Tortuga previously (Tortuga – I also have a TDI – are you on TDIClub?). But we liked so much else about our car that we decided to risk it, figuring that either it wouldn’t happen to us, or if it did, it would be a warranty issue.
Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I have a Golf, not a Jetta. But that’s because my wife preferred the Golf due to a lack of rear leg room in the Jetta. I thought, and still think, that the Jettas are sharper-looking cars.
Agreed, I think the Jettas are a sharper looking car.
But how about something like mini-vans? A year ago I was looking into them. The highest rated were the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. They were a little pricey so I looked at something like the Dodge Caravan. From my research it wasn’t as highly rated but the price reflected that and it was understandable.
But then I saw something like the Chrysler Town&County. It sold for as much as if not more than a Odyssey/Sienna. Again I wondered who was buying these things? Was it the “I always buy American” crowd? Someone who’s uncle Bob works for Chrysler and got them a “good deal”?
There had to be some reason they were buying a lesser vehicle for the same money.
Ah yes, one of those that they leave up to the discretion of the dealership.
Really? At 6’1" and rather broad shoulders I could fit comfortably in my Jetta. After I got rid of it I test drove the Civic/Corolla/Camry/Accord. I couldn’t do the Civic or Corolla - no matter what I did I was cramped.
Who knew my ego was so huge?
-Joe
The reason I really like the Jetta is because the automatic uses clutches instead of a torque converter. I am also looking at the Honda Accord and Acura TSX. Unfortunately, there’s only one Acura dealer in this state and they charge whatever the hell they want to without budging on price. Also, my experience with a Honda automatic transmission is really making me hesitant to go that route. There’s nothing quite as invigorating as having your car decide to shift into 2nd whilst you are cruising at 90 mph. My CL-S had two new transmissions put in it before I finally decided to give up on it. Anyhow, thanks for the warnings and I will definitely do some more research.
Sorry for the hijack, folks.
Yes, but I haven’t been over to check things out in quite a while–last time I went over I found a year old PM asking me to check into a long buried San Diego check-in thread…oops. :wally I’m not such a gearhead as the rest and so don’t have much to contribute lately.
The difference is in the details, big and little. The Jetta drives so much better, it feels more solid and smooth in its responses. My husband wasn’t going to buy another GTI this year, but he drove a whole bunch of cars that looked great on paper…and none of them were as nice as his 01 GTI.
Then he tried the 06 and it blew everything away. One of the things I like about VWs is all the things that are options on other cars but are standard on the VW and there are a ton of little thoughtful touches that you either can’t find in the others of its price class, stuff you find in M-Bs. By the time you finish adding all these options on a Corolla or whatever to build the same car as the VW, you’re paying more.
And VWs have that classic German trait of diabolically awful cupholders.
Of course, before this hijack turns into a lovefest, there are also things I don’t like. My wagon’s three years old and the internal door grip (where you pull the door shut) is starting to bubble and if it’s like my husband’s the rubbery coating’ll start to peel off and there’s not much I can do about it but shell out for replacing it.
Something funky just happened with the cassette player so now I can’t listen to the iPod (those FM transmittors suck). My freaking fuel flap came off in my hand while fuelling up recently. So some of the little details, not so nice.
I still like it better than any other car I’ve driven.
But there’s a ton of gearheads and online forums, so getting personal perspectives from users is really easy–vwvortex and tdiclub are good, but maybe there’s a huge forum full of enthusiastic Corolla lovers out there too.
I think the idea that there’s a certain type of people who buy VWs is maybe part of the marketing hype, since I see all types in VWs.
Sorry, bit off the point.
If you don’t like those Jetta ads you’d really hate the seat-belt campaign ones they were running in New Zealand back in the late 1990s. Complete with the surprise accident, Dad checking on his shocked kids, and an unlucky gal with no seatbelt being ejected through the windshield and her body smashing into the other car, then her Mom screaming over the body.
Right to the point they were. The fact that I still remember those spots almost ten years later means they were pretty effective.