Mercedes Benz

Debuting for 2019, Volkswagen's current A7-generation Jetta represented a meaningful step forward for a nameplate that had lost some of its luster over its previous few iterations. It impressed us enough, in fact, to earn a third-place ranking among compact sedans in our MotorTrend Ultimate Car Rankings. How's it holding up against the ever-increasing competition? To find out we spent a week in a range-topping GLI model in Pure Gray and fitted with the Autobahn Black package, which left it a few red wheel stripes shy of aping the 35th Anniversary model we tested in 2019. Now, this GLI isn't the Jetta that ranks as our third-best compact sedan. Our class rankings focus on the highest-volume variants, which in the compact-sedan class would be the Jetta powered by a 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. After years of GLI models being equipped with significantly dumbed-down and differently tuned GTI parts, the A7 GLI is once again a GTI with a trunk, albeit one w...