Loss of braking on the 2003 Volkswagen Jetta
4 crashes 4 of the 8 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 loss of braking gets reported
There are 8 reports of loss of braking on the 2003 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 78,000 miles. It is the 14th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 56,773 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, 4 a crash 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 $400–$3,000 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.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2016, at a median of 400 miles, and latest on the 2009 at 130,000 miles.
By volume the 2001 carries the most reports, with 12; the 2003 has 8. 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.
I recently bought a brand new 2003 vw jetta tdi at the end of november. On the day of the incident my car first started losing power, I noticed the pick-up wasn't as good as normal, secondly I started noticing the heat gauge went up as my car started over heating, thirdly I was almost home going down the off-ramp and when I put my foot on the brake to stop, the brake made a popping noise and then the brake hit the floor. I pumped the brakes and put the car in nuetral and was able to stop, as I began driving the car would not pick up any power and it felt as if the car was pulling against itself, I could not even get my car to go above 15 miles an hour in second gear. I drove the rest of the way home in 2nd, and with no brakes. When I made it home I thought there was a fire under my car because of how hot it was, the smell of burning was awful and as I got out of my vehicle there were chunks of creamy grease dripping from my car. I called roadside asst. And had them come to my house and tow the vehicle to a local dealership (overturf volkswagen). After several days of trying to find what the problems was overturf decided they could…
To whom it may concern: my name is [xxx]. I own a 2003 volkswagen jetta tdi that I purchased new on 3/10/03 from autohaus of lancaster in lancaster, pa. It now has 56,700 miles on it. (mostly highway) while driving on 6/21/05, I went to apply the brakes and the brakes got mushy and then grabbed and the pedal went to the floor in a sudden stop. As it was stopping you heard a sound like the vehicle now had air brakes. I depressed the pedal again the brakes let up. I was nearly rear ended by a truck the first time it happened. I pulled off the road and called the garage. It turned out to be a brake booster. Prior to this problem, while the vehicle was still under warranty at 48,000 miles, I had the vehicle in for service at the dealership where the vehicle was purchased. It was in because several times I applied the brakes in the snow and the tires locked up. This vehicle has anti-lock brakes. At this time the anti-lock brakes did not work. This happened several times. The dealership found no problems. They checked it and said all was ok. It happened again about a week after I got it out of the shop. My current mechanic (roberts…
To whom it may concern: my name is [xxx]. I own a 2003 volkswagen jetta tdi that I purchased new on 3/10/03 from autohaus of lancaster in lancaster, pa. It now has 56,700 miles on it. (mostly highway) while driving on 6/21/05, I went to apply the brakes and the brakes got mushy and then grabbed and the pedal went to the floor in a sudden stop. As it was stopping you heard a sound like the vehicle now had air brakes. I depressed the pedal again the brakes let up. I was nearly rear ended by a truck the first time it happened. I pulled off the road and called the garage. It turned out to be a brake booster. Prior to this problem, while the vehicle was still under warranty at 48,000 miles, I had the vehicle in for service at the dealership where the vehicle was purchased. It was in because several times I applied the brakes in the snow and the tires locked up. This vehicle has anti-lock brakes. At this time the anti-lock brakes did not work. This happened several times. The dealership found no problems. They checked it and said all was ok. It happened again about a week after I got it out of the shop. My current mechanic (roberts…
Also reported on the 2003 Volkswagen Jetta
Other body or interior problem
Other powertrain problem
Other electrical problem
Other engine problem
Overheating
Misfire or rough idle
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 8 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 8 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 loss of braking happen on the 2003 Volkswagen Jetta?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 55,000 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 loss of braking on the 2003 Volkswagen Jetta?
8 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.5 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