6.5

fairly significant
Crashes / Fires:
0 / 0
Injuries / Deaths:
0 / 0
Average Mileage:
10,900 miles

About These NHTSA Complaints:

This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.

So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.

2003 Volkswagen Jetta brakes problems

brakes problem

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2003 Volkswagen Jetta Owner Comments

problem #1

Aug 252003

Jetta 4-cyl Diesel

  • Manual transmission
  • 10,900 miles

A D V E R T I S E M E N T S

I recently bought a brand new 2003 VW Jetta tdi at the end of November. On the day of the incident my car first started losing power, I noticed the pick-up wasn't as good as normal, secondly I started noticing the heat gauge went up as my car started over heating, thirdly I was almost home going down the off-ramp and when I put my foot on the brake to stop, the brake made a popping noise and then the brake hit the floor. I pumped the brakes and put the car in nuetral and was able to stop, as I began driving the car would not pick up any power and it felt as if the car was pulling against itself, I could not even get my car to go above 15 miles an hour in second gear. I drove the rest of the way home in 2nd, and with no brakes. When I made it home I thought there was a fire under my car because of how hot it was, the smell of burning was awful and as I got out of my vehicle there were chunks of creamy grease dripping from my car. I called roadside asst. And had them come to my house and tow the vehicle to a local dealership (overturf Volkswagen). After several days of trying to find what the problems was overturf decided they could not find a problem with my vehicle. My husband and I had to force them to look into the braking system. Overturf explained to us that what happened to me out on the highway was typical and not to be concerned, I knew differently and enforced the fact that they needed to check the braking system. After several hours of debating over the fact that the breaks didn't need checked, they test drove the car again and the car reinacted the problem. In the end, my brake booster and master cylinder had to be replaced. Luckily my car still is under warrenty, but the car only had 10,900 miles on it, something like the whole breaking system should not fail with as little as mileage as the car had. One week later the car gets picked up and the next day my cruise will not set. I now have another appointment to get my cruise control fixed.

- Kennewick, WA, USA

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