Ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 1998 Volkswagen Jetta
1 injury 1 of the 5 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure gets reported
There are 5 reports of ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 1998 Volkswagen Jetta, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 82,563 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 an injury is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $250–$1,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 16 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 1997, at a median of 35,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 170,000 miles.
By volume the 2019 carries the most reports, with 58; the 1998 has 5. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Ignition switch. I have a faulty ignition switch. With the car running, there have been occasions when my headlights have turned off, and the brake light came on. I have seen approximately 5 postings on different message boards with the same problem. *la
My 1998 volkswagen (vw) jetta has an ignition switch problem. When driving, it falls back, turning off the electrical system (including lights and windshield wipers). Vw has identified this as a problem in the 1996 and 1997 jettas (and sent out a recall on the part) but does not recognize it as a problem for the 1998 models. I have been told by a vw service person that the 1998 models use the same ignition switch as the 1996/1997's. Vw representatives claim that they do not see a problem with the 1998's. This is a dangerous problem and should be addressed by vw. *la
The ignition switch in my car is getting worse. The first time it malfunctioned was on a cold and snowy night. I was driving along and all of a sudden the lights went out, the wipers stopped, the defroster fan stopped and the ABS light went on. It was a little unsettling. The vw dealer told me it was a bad ingnition switch and it would cost about $300.oo dollars to replace. When I asked the parts department if they had the switch in stock he laughed and said "oh yeah". I am now driving my car only in the daytime while I save the money to replace the switch. I have owned over 30 cars and have never had an ignition fail.*ak
Also reported on the 1998 Volkswagen Jetta
Other electrical problem
Other visibility problem
Other body or interior problem
Other wheel or tire problem
Other powertrain problem
Window regulator or power window failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure happen on the 1998 Volkswagen Jetta?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 85,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 1998 Volkswagen Jetta?
5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed