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Driving a Dodge Charger POS
Nov. 17th, 2024 05:24 pmWhen we were traveling on the East Coast for my inlaws' 60th anniversary a week ago our rental car was a Dodge Charger SXT— or Dodge Charger POS, as I've taken to calling it. ...Where POS is car slang for Piece Of Shit.
Look up pictures of the Dodge Charger online and you'll see a car that doesn't look half bad. In fact it looks pretty good. It's big. It's sleek. It looks like it goes fast. But those are likely pictures of one of the higher trim levels. The base trim level, the SXT, is what we got at the rental lot. It looked more like this:
Though even this (photo above) looks better than our actual rental car. Imagine the car above but with a few scrapes and dings on the corners. Rental agencies used to be meticulous about fixing their cars to look pristine. Now, after supply chain challenges in 2020-2022 forced them to run older models in their fleet they basically don't give a shit. Our vehicle was a 2023 model with over 36,000 miles on the odometer.
Okay, now that I've explained that our rental vehicle lacked curb appeal, how was the interior? Oh, that's where it gets worse.
The interior looks and feels like an American car from 15-20 years ago. The one concession to the past 10 years of automotive design was the presence of a computer screen in the center console, but even that was small and had problems (more below). On the whole, before we'd even driven as far as the edge of the parking lot my spouse proclaimed, "This car makes me never want to buy a Dodge."
That's an awfully damning first impression. What did we think after driving it a few days and 250 miles? Here are some thoughts.
Trying to drive elegantly in city traffic was a chore. The car was sluggish off the line at part throttle. When I pressed the pedal further to try to squirt into a gap in traffic to shift lanes the engine made loud, thrashing sounds along with delivering adequate acceleration. It was like the car had two personalities, "LOL, I'm a road boulder," and "Look at me, I drive like an asshole!!" with nothing in between. And "asshole" mode wasn't even that fast.
There are definitely higher-spec models out there. Those are what Dodge and the Charger line are known for. "Does it have one of the V-8 engines?"my father-in-law asked when he saw the car. "Ha ha, no," I responded, "It's a rental." "Well, what about a Scat Pack?" he asked. "Again, rental," I chuckled.
On the other hand, the Charger did perform adequately on the highway. Rolling along at 65-70mph on open roads is this car's happy spot. Occasionally hill climbs and needs to merge left to pass didn't flummox it. If only it could have that personality around town as well!
The '08 Charger was launched when Chrysler was part of Daimler-Chrysler, a German maker. DC took a chassis from their previous-generation Mercedes E Class sedan and bolted an American-looking car body onto it. The 2023 model is little different from the 2008 in this regard.
Unfortunately this screen— and the poor way it works— still feels maybe 8 years old. What's wrong with it? Two big things.
First, this is one of those designs where too many common controls are routed through menus on the screen. Want to change the temperature or fan speed? You can push those buttons and turn those knobs lower down in the center stack, but they pop up a full-screen animation on the screen. And the temperature controls aren't even marked in degrees. The on-screen graphic is just a slider from "cold" to "hot" a la automobiles from the 1960s.
The second big problem with the controls is that the car claims to have Apple CarPlay but it is broken. I saw zero evidence of CarPlay being available. Yet Dodge lists it as a standard feature on all trim levels of the car. Instead what this Charger had was the company's UConnect system with some kind of "Projection Mode" for smartphones that also did work with my iPhone, at all.
Look, CarPlay isn't hard. I had a rental car in 2015 with CarPlay that worked well. Here we are 8-9 years later. There shouldn't be fake bullshit versions of CarPlay rolling out of factories. There shouldn't even be buggy versions being built— which I've encountered in other FCA vehicles like a Jeep Grand Cherokee this summer. This is a respect in which longer term experience with this car only strengthened the negative sentiment my spouse expressed in the first minutes in this car: "This car makes me never want to buy a Dodge."
Look up pictures of the Dodge Charger online and you'll see a car that doesn't look half bad. In fact it looks pretty good. It's big. It's sleek. It looks like it goes fast. But those are likely pictures of one of the higher trim levels. The base trim level, the SXT, is what we got at the rental lot. It looked more like this:
Though even this (photo above) looks better than our actual rental car. Imagine the car above but with a few scrapes and dings on the corners. Rental agencies used to be meticulous about fixing their cars to look pristine. Now, after supply chain challenges in 2020-2022 forced them to run older models in their fleet they basically don't give a shit. Our vehicle was a 2023 model with over 36,000 miles on the odometer.
Okay, now that I've explained that our rental vehicle lacked curb appeal, how was the interior? Oh, that's where it gets worse.
The interior looks and feels like an American car from 15-20 years ago. The one concession to the past 10 years of automotive design was the presence of a computer screen in the center console, but even that was small and had problems (more below). On the whole, before we'd even driven as far as the edge of the parking lot my spouse proclaimed, "This car makes me never want to buy a Dodge."
That's an awfully damning first impression. What did we think after driving it a few days and 250 miles? Here are some thoughts.
Performance
The car's standard 3.6L V6 engine is rated at 292hp would seem to offer plenty of power, but sadly in real life it feels at least 100 horses shy of that. I don't know to what extent the problem is a weak torque curve, or poor throttle calibration, or the 8-speed automatic transmission being too eager to shift into higher gear for fuel economy, but acceleration was weak.Trying to drive elegantly in city traffic was a chore. The car was sluggish off the line at part throttle. When I pressed the pedal further to try to squirt into a gap in traffic to shift lanes the engine made loud, thrashing sounds along with delivering adequate acceleration. It was like the car had two personalities, "LOL, I'm a road boulder," and "Look at me, I drive like an asshole!!" with nothing in between. And "asshole" mode wasn't even that fast.
There are definitely higher-spec models out there. Those are what Dodge and the Charger line are known for. "Does it have one of the V-8 engines?"my father-in-law asked when he saw the car. "Ha ha, no," I responded, "It's a rental." "Well, what about a Scat Pack?" he asked. "Again, rental," I chuckled.
On the other hand, the Charger did perform adequately on the highway. Rolling along at 65-70mph on open roads is this car's happy spot. Occasionally hill climbs and needs to merge left to pass didn't flummox it. If only it could have that personality around town as well!
Handling
The Charger model, since its resurrection in 2008, has always managed to feel a bit too floaty. I say that because I've occasionally gotten Chargers (and mechanically similar cars, like the Dodge Magnum and Chrysler 300) as rentals over the past 16 years. These cars always feel like the body from one design was bolted onto the chassis from another. ...Which is actually not far from the truth!The '08 Charger was launched when Chrysler was part of Daimler-Chrysler, a German maker. DC took a chassis from their previous-generation Mercedes E Class sedan and bolted an American-looking car body onto it. The 2023 model is little different from the 2008 in this regard.
Interior
The fact that the interior design looks 15 years old isn't too surprising... considering the Charger was last redesigned in 2011! The one part of it that looked less than 10 years old was the screen in the center console, as I mentioned above.Unfortunately this screen— and the poor way it works— still feels maybe 8 years old. What's wrong with it? Two big things.
First, this is one of those designs where too many common controls are routed through menus on the screen. Want to change the temperature or fan speed? You can push those buttons and turn those knobs lower down in the center stack, but they pop up a full-screen animation on the screen. And the temperature controls aren't even marked in degrees. The on-screen graphic is just a slider from "cold" to "hot" a la automobiles from the 1960s.
The second big problem with the controls is that the car claims to have Apple CarPlay but it is broken. I saw zero evidence of CarPlay being available. Yet Dodge lists it as a standard feature on all trim levels of the car. Instead what this Charger had was the company's UConnect system with some kind of "Projection Mode" for smartphones that also did work with my iPhone, at all.
Look, CarPlay isn't hard. I had a rental car in 2015 with CarPlay that worked well. Here we are 8-9 years later. There shouldn't be fake bullshit versions of CarPlay rolling out of factories. There shouldn't even be buggy versions being built— which I've encountered in other FCA vehicles like a Jeep Grand Cherokee this summer. This is a respect in which longer term experience with this car only strengthened the negative sentiment my spouse expressed in the first minutes in this car: "This car makes me never want to buy a Dodge."
