We've had three Jettas, all diesel though. Gas ones are less common here, due to our higher gas costs. Bought the first one new in '85 and drove it for 775,000km until the body finally fell apart. But a local kid ran it for a couple more years.
In about '02 I looked around for a used one and my trusted VW specialist mechanic said: "get a '99 or older, fewer $500 electronic "modules" to go wrong". Spent a lot of money to get that one to about 400,000km.
In '07 when looking for a new car, my mechanic said: "better go Honda or Toyota". The early 2000's VW's seemed to have a lot of reliability problems after the company sent a lot of their manufacturing off-shore (Brazil I think).
Last summer we got an '02 Jetta as a second car. So far so good.
I hope this is helpful.
Peter