What's The German Word For "Price Cut"? The 2016 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid SEL Premium

The 2016 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid SEL Premium.

In a business based on forward momentum, it shouldn't be a surprise that most of the time, prices move up from year to year.  Staying even with cost increases, exchange rates and sometimes more than a little hubris when the manufacturer senses it has a product for which customers will pay more all contribute to sticker price creep.

Sometimes it's several hundred dollars.  If it's only a hundred bucks, we'll comment on it (as we did last week in our review of the 2017 Kia Sorento SXL AWD V6) as being an instance of admirable restraint.  And we'll call attention to it when the price remains unchanged.

So imagine our surprise and delight to find that the 2016 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid SEL Premium costs $775 less than the 2015 model we reviewed a year and a half ago.

German For Hybrid: The 2015 Volkwswagen Jetta Hybrid SEL

The 2015 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid SEL.

As with the just-reviewed 2015 Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, Volkswagen's Jetta Hybrid is taking a different path from the "look at me" hybrids...cars like the Toyota Prius that proclaim their difference with styling that stands apart from more conventional cars. As we've noted before, it's a risky path, as hybrid buyers seem to want to call attention to their purchase so that friends and strangers alike know they've chosen to save gas and pollute less.

New Car Review: 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid

The 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid whispers its green credentials rather than shouting them.

 

The de-gimmickification (give me until this afternoon to make a Wikipedia entry) of hybrid vehicles has been a tricky thing. As we noted in our review of the Toyota Prius C, the vast majority of hybrid buyers seem to want to call attention to themselves. The "big" (compared to the Prius C) Prius has attained a good chunk of its best-seller status by being instantly identifiable as a "green" vehicle. Honda, a strong candidate for major player with the environmentally sensitive, has struck out with its hybrid offerings thus far, the Impact and CR-Z being too small to be practical and mainstream and the Accord and Civic hybrids having been virtually invisible...looking for all the world like regular Accords and Civics with "hybrid" badges on them...never mind what was under the hood and what wasn't coming out of the tailpipe.

 

So it's a huge surprise to this writer that Volkswagen, out to conquer market share in leaps and bounds, has taken the Honda Civic approach with the Jetta Hybrid.