1996 VOLKSWAGEN JETTA — Complaint #479496
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about STEERING:LINKAGES:DRAG:POWER ASSIST SYSTEM filed June 12, 2004
NHTSA complaint #479496 (ODI reference 10075256) concerns a 1996 VOLKSWAGEN JETTA and was filed on June 12, 2004. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 9, 2002. The vehicle had 54,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as steering:linkages:drag:power assist system, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same VOLKSWAGEN JETTA cohort independently describe similar steering:linkages:drag:power assist system failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 1996 VOLKSWAGEN JETTA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
THE STEERING IN THIS 1996 JETTA IS JUST HORRIBLE, NO MECHANIC HAS BEEN ABLE TO REPAIR IT. IM TOLD THERE IS SOMETHING ON THE WHEEL BASE TORN (REAR) AND ITS GOING TO COST ME 800 TO FIX. YET, THE STEERING HAS BEEN THIS WAY SINCE IVE HAD THE CAR AND I HARDLY NOTICED UNTIL I RENTED A CAR (BECAUSE THE CRANK SHAFT IN THE JETTA BROKE TOO). THIS CAR HAS NEVER BEEN IN A COLLISION OR ANY MAJOR TRAMA TO HAVE ANYTHING TORN, IT ONLY HAS 66,000 MILES ON IT, YET IVE HAD TO REPLACE THE CRANK SHAFT, LAST WEEK THE ENTIRE COMPUTER, 2 YEARS AGO THE ENTIRE ENGINE FELL TO THE GROUND (MY LAND LORD DISCOVERED) AND NOW THE STEERING. I THOUGHT VWS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WELL BUILT CARS. *AK
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 479496 |
| ODI Number | 10075256 |
| Date Filed | June 12, 2004 |
| Failure Date | October 9, 2002 |
| VIN | 3VWRA81H1TM |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.