 my mom has had Jettas as her past two cars (a 1997 with 170,000 and a 2002 currantly with 100000 on it) both cars have never given any problems out of the normal range of expected maintanence so i decided on the 2008 jetta s as my next car. so far im very impressed, i got it with 54000 miles on it and it now has 62000. i have only owned the car a month. the first week i had it i took it from RI, to NC to CO(phish) and back to RI. the car isnt old enough for me to judge reliability but so far everything seems solid and the car seems very well built. i will update this review once i have put some real milage on the car. 