The recently departed ?Golf with a boot? deserves more recognition says ESM?s editor.

Last week?s news that the Jetta saloon would not longer feature on Volkswagen?s UK price list was hardly met with grief and distress. Nobody will be building statues to commemorate its passing, and no national day of mourning will be declared. Yet I think the humble Jetta deserves a better legacy than what it currently has.

It shouldn?t come as a surprise that the ?other Volkswagen saloon? has bitten the dust in the UK. Four-door versions of C-segment hatchbacks have always been a relatively niche market, with neither Ford nor Vauxhall offering saloon versions of the Focus or Astra respectively.

The constant march of the crossover SUV won?t have helped, with a sensible sedan never going to win in a battle of desirability against the Tiguan or new T-Roc. As any A-Level economist can tell you, low demand results in lower values. For the Jetta this has meant cliff-edge depreciation, rendering it unattractive to those considering PCP Finance or lease deals. That the more expensive Passat could be cheaper per month was a nail in the coffin for the Jetta, creating a spiral of ever-increasing depreciation.

Even across Europe, the Jetta is a vehicle with limited appeal, selling less than 9,000 units in 2016. By contrast the Golf notched up more than 491,000 sales in the same year, with the UK responsible for 62,000 of those alone.
Yet not all markets are so anti-Jetta. The United States took ...