Dodge Fails Again

For years american car companies have been struggling to keep up with the foreign car companies in many different ways. Cars made by American car companies have always been plagued with problems, namely reliability. One of the worst in recent years has been Dodge. Dodge is now actually owned by what was until recently know as DaimlerChrysler. This is German corporation recently sold off the chrysler division because it was hemorraging money. Dodge's most recent failure comes in the form of their replacement for the Neon SRT-4. The original SRT-4 was basically a Chrysler PT-Cruiser in drag with the transmission from a european minivan. This latest attempt at a decent 'sporty' vehicle is bound for failure as well. Let me first define what I mean by 'failure'. This car will sell in fairly respectable numbers. However, it will never meet its goal of competing with other hot-hatchbacks like the VW R32 or the Mazdaspeed 3. I would like to address some of the issues that are inherent with this car. Dodge's goal was a respectable one: build a quick, sporty hatchback that will be reasonably priced. To keep costs down they employed a technique used by almost all car companies nowadays, they lift parts from other cars to make a new one. The engine from this can be seen making an appearance in other cars such as the Jeep Compass, the Jeep Patriot, and the Chrysler Sebring. This is not actually a bad thing because that means that the engine is well tested and tends to be more reliable. Yet, when it comes to owning a sports car it is not fun to brag that your engine can be can be found in a SUV. There are some improvements that Dodge has made over the last version of the SRT-4. The most obvious of these improvements is the 85 horsepower increase over the last version. This time Dodge actually fitted a decent 6-speed transmission in the car as well. The geniuses over at Dodge's SRT division were even smart enough to fit four wheel disc brakes from the larger SRT-8. This way the SRT-4 will actually stop once those 285 horses get it up to speed. Right now you might be thinking, well this car doesn't actually sound that bad. Well... your wrong. Dodge says that they have worked on the cars handling by putting in a new rack and pinion steering system and some electronic steering assists. Yet, they overlooked the most important feature of all. Its a front wheel drive car! That means that the front wheels have to pull the car along and steer the car. It is hard enough for traction control systems to put that kind of horsepower down to the ground with out having to steer the car. The results are two different things. First the car torque steers like a monster. Let the wheel go when you hit the accelerator and you might end up in a ditch. The other issue is that you can't take a turn at any relatively high speed. The car will suffer from what is called understeer. The wheels will be trying to pull the car forward and try to turn at the same time. The result is terrible handling. This problem can be easily solved. MAKE IT 4-WHEEL DRIVE!!! Yet this would take more money to make than Dodge was willing to spend. This brings me to my conclusion which is that this car, like its predecessor, is a failure.