Weekly Rides, Notes from the Dark Side of the Car Rental Counter

My name is Mark Jennings. I’m a consulting engineer that travels quite regularly. Lately this has been a weekly affair. As part of the benefit of this travel, I get the opportunity to drive quite a variety and some of the newest rental ‘beasts’ Detroit and Tokyo have to offer. My personal stable includes a 02 Porsche Carrera, a 01 Audi allroad and a 2005 Chevy Silverado SS pickup (the AWD version). To say the least, I love cars. I have a PCA, SCCA and SSSCC (local Yakama Valley Sand & Sage Sports Car Club) autocross and DE event background that extends back 30 years. Also, in a previous life, I ran ¼ mile brackets when Sears Point was still named, Sears Point.

When I travel, besides the standard fair cell phone and its “must have” car charger, I carry several accessories that need to be plugged in to a vehicle’s 12 volt outlets. These accessories include a Valentine One radar detector, a Cobra handheld CB radio and a RoadyXT XM radio receiver. The Valentine and the CB are necessary evils for any road trip where long hours are spent on straight flat interstate highways with unreasonably low speed limits. These two instruments of stealth are also helpful when a bit of “spirited” driving is called for on a winding country two lane road. As far as the XM receiver, well let’s just say I’m a bit spoiled plus the traffic and weather info stations do help as you enter our nation’s major metropolitan areas. Anyway, besides the myriad of suction cups, magnetic mounts and antenna wires, all these accessories (plus the cell phone charger) require a power supply and all have neat little plugs that fit directly into a vehicles cigarette lighter. Most new cars today have two or three of these outlets scattered throughout the cockpit with some located more conveniently than others. I also carry an extension cord and a splitter just in case the outlets are more inconvenient then convenient. If you have a number of accessories that require use of these outlets, believe me, the number and the location should be a key consideration when looking at any new vehicle.

This week’s workhorse is a 2007 Dodge Charger. The Charger features Front Engine, Rear Drive, Independent Rear Suspension, 3.5 Liter V6, 4 Speed Auto with OD, 4 Wheel Disk Brakes, ABS, Electronic Stability and Traction Control. The car I rented was the “Plain Jane” version with vinyl seats. The only notable interior option was a satellite radio (Sirius, Not XM). As far as 12 volt accessory outlets, this car had two, one on the inside of the center console and one located low on the dash, as part of the fold out ashtray assembly. This was basically a brand new car with only 3 miles on the odometer when I picked it up at DFW. It had well over 600 miles on it when I returned it 7 days later.

Visibility when driving the Charger took a few days to get used to. The first thing I noticed is that you sit way back with your head even with the B pillar. It isn’t so much that you sit well back from the dash, it’s that the windshield sits well forward with the roofline extending forward to meet it. This gives you the sense of sitting in a deep dark cave. This can be a good thing, especially on bright mornings or evenings when you’re trying to find a hiding place from the sunrise or the sunset. However at night in heavy traffic, for instance 360 South through Arlington, TX just outside of DFW, a little brighter greenhouse (meaning larger or more glass) would be appreciated. Another visibility issue related to the seating position is that since your head is even with the B pillar it’s difficult to get a clear view when clearing your baffles to the left before making a lane change to the left. And last, more of a weirdness than a true visibility issue is associated with the “swoopy” shape of the rear side windows; they “kick” up to give the car a sporty look from the outside. What I found is that when I looked to the right rear, clearing my baffles to the right when moving into the right lane, the swept up door panel looked like another vehicle coming up on my six to the right. I can’t tell you how many times I was a bit startled and had to double take conditions clear prior to sliding back into the right lane.

Other then the Chargers visibility oddities, this car performed generally well when meeting its intended function, getting you from point A to point B safely and economically. In fact, because of the rear drive and independent rear suspension, the car could be coxed into a pretty good giggle factor when at speed on the back roads. From experience, the car was very stable and confident at speeds in excess of the legal limit on a number of the lightly traveled two lane roads in East Texas, just had stay clear of the oil field support trucks jumping on and off of the highways. One should note that the speed limits here are in the 70 MPH range. I would say the Chargers handling was on par with some of the mid size German sedans from the mid 90’s. I do think a little less understeer (push) dialed into the suspension tuning would make the car a bit easier to drive. There was only one time I felt uncomfortable with this car’s handling. On a freeway entrance ramp with a pretty large radius and banked turn, just as I was accelerating out of the turn and just about the moment the cars weight shifted to the rear (rear coming down and front coming up) there seemed to be a tremendous amount of push. In fact, there was so much push that the New Jersey Barriers marking the left side of the on ramp came at me like I aimed at them.

Like all things in life there are some good points, there are some bad points and then, there’s the ugly. This version of the Dodge Charger covers the entire spectrum of good, bad and ugly and due to the balance of bad and ugly outweighing the good, I’ll put buying one of these as a replacement for my existing stable at the bottom of my list. Sorry Dodge, for me the Charger’s just not a keeper.

The Good;

• White backlight instruments, these are great for night driving.
• The notch, NOT the outlet, in the center console that allows an accessory power cord to pass through to the 12 volt outlet inside of the console and still be able to close the console lid. This outlet was used for my cell phone charger.
• Telescopic and height adjustable steering column.
• Seat adjustment that included electric bottom height and bottom tilt plus a manual lumbar adjustment in the seat back. Although, the seat back could have used a bit more lumbar adjustment.
• The 3.5 Liter V6 had a respectable match of HP and torque for this vehicles weight. Bottom line, this vehicle was NOT overwhelmingly underpowered.
• The number of gears and the transmission shift points are well matched to the engine performance and vehicle weight.
• Coat hooks are included over the rear doors.
• The vehicle had a nice rigid structure with none to little cowl shake or body rattle on rough roads.
• The vehicle had a nice firm suspension. The ride was not teeth jarring but sporty stiff.
• The radio had an accessory jack for tape, CD or MP3 players.
• The remote door lock controls mounted in the key, European style. Chevy and Ford take note I hate rental cars where the remote lock has been lost and the rental company provides only a key.
• Lots of trunk room, comparable to many front wheel drive cars of the same size.

The Bad;

• No trip computer that shows elapsed drive time, average MPG and miles to empty.
• Very hard seat bottoms, vinyl upholstery and shallow seat and seat back bolsters. After two hours in the saddle, your legs and hips are a bit sore and your butt is a bit sweaty.
• No seat heaters. Ever sit on a cold vinyl seat on a nice “frosty” morning.
• No outside rear view mirror heaters.
• Plasticy (recycled milk jug) dash look that was “flatter than a board”.
• Only one (1) dash mounted 12 volt outlet. The second was in the center console. The dash mounted outlet was way to low, overstretching power cords that needed to stretch to the windshield.
• In satellite mode, the radio did NOT display anything other than the station number. No performer and even worse, no channel information (Comedy, Decades, R&B, News, Traffic, Weather, etc…). I ended up using the RoadyXT and XM, sorry Sirius, Dodge did you bad here.
• The turn signal/windshield wiper/headlight dimmer stalk from the steering column is mounted just below a cruise control stalk. The two control stalks are too close together and every time I went to use the turn signals, I’d either get my fingers tangled between the two or grab the cruise control. Take a lesson from Ford; mount the cruise control in the steering wheel or on the other side of the column.
• The “swoopy” rear doors that could be confused for a vehicle coming up on your right rear.
• Your head even with the B pillar causing a blind spot when checking out the left prior to a merging to the left.

The Ugly;

• The ESP, BAS and Traction Control system trouble lights came on intermittently, disengaging these systems. Drive on a rain and oil slick highway and these systems inadvertently fail, you could be in the ditch before you know it. Having it flash on then seemingly fix itself is bad karma. These problems ARE NOT self healing. If the indication locked in, at least you would you would keep your guard up. Please note that a quick Google search on the internet shows that this problem is NOT uncommon. There are a number of general auto and Chrysler product related discussion boards where this is a central theme.
• When you stick your key in the door and manually unlock the vehicle, it sets off the ALARM. Talk about embarrassing. Once the horn starts to blare and you fumble around trying to get the key out of the door, you’re so startled and befuddled all you can do is randomly push buttons on the remote in a vain attempt to silence the alarm. I think you just have to push the lock button and it goes silent. Of course, the rental car company providing an owners manual to figure this stuff out, you have to be kidding. Shame on Dodge, the alarm shouldn’t go off when I use the appropriate key and shame on the rental car company, if you’re going to remove the owners manuals so they wont get stolen, include copies of some of the basic instructions for common features like the ALARM.

Have a good trip.


MMJennings