'06 Charger: My Review

I'm on vacation in Arizona, which is nice, 'cause it's fifteen below
zero and snowing at home. Our rental car (from Enterprise) is an '06
Charger. Having lived with it for a week and 800 miles now, I must
report that I don't like it, partly because of what's entailed in it
being a new 2006 car, and partly because it is this *particular* car.

Too many controls aren't well thought out. The cruise control is on a
*stalk*, which is a giant step backward. Chrysler was among the first
to put the controls on the steering wheel when they went to the
Accustar column in '90. That was an enormous improvement over the
previous stalk location. Now they've removed them from the wheel and
put them back on a stalk. On their *own* stalk, which occupies the
space normally reserved for the turn signal stalk, displacing the
latter downward at a bizarre angle and into a bizarre position so you
have to grope for it. The cruise stalk itself works OK as a control
device, but it should've been put on the right, somewhere in that vast
plain left empty by the ignition switch's dashboard location.

The turn signal stalk, meanwhile, controls the signals, headlight beam
selection and the windshield wipers, but not the parking and headlamps,
which are on their own rotary switch on the dashboard. Nothing too
grossly objectionable here, I guess, but it's a bit of a nonstandard
grouping. And the beam selection is achieved by pushing the lever
forward for high beam, pulling rearward for low beam, or pulling extra
rearward for high beam flash. That's how Japanese cars do it, so it
must be better, right? (wrong!)

The car comes equipped with about seventy percent of the average
Buick's Nanny Buttwiper devices; five minutes' effort with the glovebox
manual and the ignition key shuts off some of them (auto lock, auto
unlock) but not others. It's still too much. This car has hyperactive
IP warning lamps and chimes. Start the engine before fastening your
seatbelt, and the seatbelt light blinks and the chime sounds for the
Federally-mandated 7 seconds...and for five seconds every fifteen
seconds thereafter. Go ahead and buckle in, and *Chime!*.
Congratulations, you fastened your safety belt all by yourself.

Start the engine with belt fastened but take the car out of Park before
releasing the parking brake, the brake warning lamp flashes urgently
and the chime sounds. Release the brake, and *ChimeChime!*
Congratulations, you released the brake all by yourself.

The parking brake itself is a pedal type unit, with a hand release. The
pedal itself feels as if it's connected to nothing at all. Put your
foot on it, and it flies to the floor. It holds the car OK, not as well
as others I've used. At least it's not one of those obnoxious
kick-to-apply, kick-to-release types or the import-copycat spacewasting
hand lever.

Sometimes you get a *Chime!* or *ChimeChime!* for no apparent reason.
Congratulations, you're super!

The accelerator is a spring-loaded dimmer switch mechanically connected
to nothing at all. Feedback, there is none. Also, when using the cruise
control, the pedal stays at the idle position. Want to speed up just a
little to pass another vehicle? Sure, but you'll have to grope around
through the accelerator's travel to find the point past which
additional
acceleration happens. It would've been a simple matter of programming
to move that point to the top of the accelerator's travel when the
cruise is engaged, but they didn't. Instead, they spent their time
carefully programming the drive-by-wire so that if you blow your nose
towards the accelerator with the transmission in gear, the force of the
booger landing
on the pedal causes the car to lurch. Vroom vroom! Powerful
acceleration feeling, vroom vroom! I'm sure it makes for impressive
test drives, but it makes parking garage maneuvering spastic and
difficult to control. The cruise control continues this theme; the
"resume" function causes the car to lurch (charge?) ahead with needless
alacrity and a jarring and noisy downshift. A more gradual return to
the previously-set speed would be more appropriate.

The horn is all the way in the middle of the steering wheel, coincident
with the airbag cover. Not a good place. The wheel itself is well
shaped, so I guess that's something. The window lift switches are
halfassed in that someone somewhere in the chain of command specified
intuitive rear-hinged switches (push down to lower the window, pull up
to raise).
Fine idea, poorly implemented. There's nothing intuitive about the feel
of the switches, and they are all crammed together. You have to look
down at them to get the correct switch and operate it properly, and
even then, if it's the driver window you want lowered, there's almost
no detent at all between "down" and "auto down", so frequently the
window drops out of sight when all that was desired was a 2" air gap.
The door lock switch is OK, but the manual door lock knobs in the rear
doors are at the *rear*, not the front, of each door. They cannot be
reached from the front. Sure, yeah, they're power, so what? Sometimes
it's necessary or desireable to unlock *one* rear door without futzing
with the power buttons. Or, for that matter, to look through the
nearest window to check if the doors are locked or unlocked. You cannot
see the rear lock buttons from outside.

The gauges are the trendy electroluminescent (or
faux-electroluminescent) black-on-white variety, and they're plenty
legible, though automatic cars still don't need tachometers. There is
no way to turn *off* the IP illumination, only to make it more bright
or less bright. Um...yeah, thanks, you're right, I didn't really want
to turn 'em off; if I had really wanted to, you would've let me.

The ignition key, as previously mentioned, is in the dash, *almost*
where it belongs. You have to insert it at about a 10:30/4:30 angle;
the "run" position has the key vertical. This isn't a major irritant,
just a minor one. What's a major irritant is the *huge* delay between
turning the key to "start" and having the starter engage. I'm not
talking microseconds
here; if you insert-and-twist-to-start, there is time for the
hyperactive chime to go *ChimeChimeChime!* (or for you to sit through a
long second and a half's silence, depending on the chime's mood) before
the starter engages. I do not know or care why this is done, but I do
know it doesn't have to be that way, and that it shouldn't.

The fast windshield rake angle seriously restricts the view outward and
causes the rearview mirror to obstruct far too much of the important
part of the forward-rightward view when I adjust my seating position
for proper vision to the sides and rear. Lower the seat so the rearview
mirror no longer is such an obstacle, and sideward/rearward visibility
is
proportionally hampered. I take especial care to adjust all the
adjustables to fit me when I get in a car not my own, and even so, a
two hour highway drive left me cramped in the leg, ankle, left shoulder
and neck. And I'm right smack in the middle of average height! Body
fixtures and interior materials are somewhat better than they were in
the Chrysler products of the early '90s. Legroom's acceptable for a
6'5" passenger.

NVH is at about the same level as it was in my 1992 4-cylinder LeBaron
sedan, which is unacceptable given the interceding 17 model years'
supposed advances since my '92 was designed, and the fact that my '92
had almost 150k miles on it when I bought it, while this car had 953
miles when I picked it up. The power steering pump or something else
under the hood puts out a constant buzzing, grinding whine that changes
pitch with engine speed and is audible inside the car with all the
windows up. H'm...the P/S pump and
other engine-driven accessories on my '65 Valiant were silent. Ditto my
'91, and my '92, and my other '91, and my other '92, and my '62, and my
'89, for that matter. What happened? I've heard this noise on too many
other new and recent Mopars to dismiss it as a one-off.

The V6 engine has adequate acceleration, with a Taurus-like warbling V6
engine note that I find very offputting. I don't like V6s.
Unfortunately, I find the rest of the car so unpleasant that even the
substitution of a largely-pointless V8 engine wouldn't make me like it.
It is not fun, relaxing, comfortable rewarding or easy to drive.

I could grouse a fair bit about the car's lighting system, but I'm on
vacation and deliberately not thinking about car lights.

All in all, I give the car about a C/C+.

"Daniel J. Stern" wrote:

> Our rental car (from Enterprise) is an '06 Charger.

Did you find that the door sill was too high? (ie could you
comfortably rest your arm on the door sill with the window open?) Did
you feel like you were driving a submarine?

Do you have anything else to say about exterior visibility?

Wind/road noise at highway speeds?

<<The horn is all the way in the middle of the steering wheel,
coincident
with the airbag cover. >>

So can you just bash on the pad and honk the horn or is it a button or
bar? I know I always instinctively just reach up and try bashing the
middle of the wheel when I want to honk a horn so if it does this I
certainly wouldn't call that a flaw.

"Daniel J. Stern" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> I'm on vacation in Arizona, which is nice, 'cause it's fifteen below
> zero and snowing at home. Our rental car (from Enterprise) is an '06
> Charger. Having lived with it for a week and 800 miles now, I must
> report that I don't like it, partly because of what's entailed in it
> being a new 2006 car, and partly because it is this *particular* car.
>

In the 6 days of ownership, how many times did it need to go back for
repairs?


ok ok kidding!!

You pretty much nailed it. I just spent last week with a Charger rental as
well and was not impressed at all. I hate the cruise control stalk on this
thing. The performance (if you want to call it that) was seriously lacking
even for a V6. My rental had about 7000 miles on it. The car looked cheap
inside. I couldn't see the turn signal stalk as DJS mentioned...bad
location. Seats not comfortable. Factory stereo was OK. Everyone thinks
it was a hemi I suppose because I had everyone trying to stoplight race me.
Obviously they couldn't tell the difference visually.

I have a 2002 Dodge Intrepid ES with that 3.5 V6. My Intrepid is better
looking in and out than this new Charger.

=====================
"Daniel J. Stern" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> I'm on vacation in Arizona, which is nice, 'cause it's fifteen below
> zero and snowing at home. Our rental car (from Enterprise) is an '06
> Charger. Having lived with it for a week and 800 miles now, I must
> report that I don't like it, partly because of what's entailed in it
> being a new 2006 car, and partly because it is this *particular* car.
>
> Too many controls aren't well thought out. The cruise control is on a
> *stalk*, which is a giant step backward. Chrysler was among the first
> to put the controls on the steering wheel when they went to the
> Accustar column in '90. That was an enormous improvement over the
> previous stalk location. Now they've removed them from the wheel and
> put them back on a stalk. On their *own* stalk, which occupies the
> space normally reserved for the turn signal stalk, displacing the
> latter downward at a bizarre angle and into a bizarre position so you
> have to grope for it. The cruise stalk itself works OK as a control
> device, but it should've been put on the right, somewhere in that vast
> plain left empty by the ignition switch's dashboard location.
>
> The turn signal stalk, meanwhile, controls the signals, headlight beam
> selection and the windshield wipers, but not the parking and headlamps,
> which are on their own rotary switch on the dashboard. Nothing too
> grossly objectionable here, I guess, but it's a bit of a nonstandard
> grouping. And the beam selection is achieved by pushing the lever
> forward for high beam, pulling rearward for low beam, or pulling extra
> rearward for high beam flash. That's how Japanese cars do it, so it
> must be better, right? (wrong!)
>
> The car comes equipped with about seventy percent of the average
> Buick's Nanny Buttwiper devices; five minutes' effort with the glovebox
> manual and the ignition key shuts off some of them (auto lock, auto
> unlock) but not others. It's still too much. This car has hyperactive
> IP warning lamps and chimes. Start the engine before fastening your
> seatbelt, and the seatbelt light blinks and the chime sounds for the
> Federally-mandated 7 seconds...and for five seconds every fifteen
> seconds thereafter. Go ahead and buckle in, and *Chime!*.
> Congratulations, you fastened your safety belt all by yourself.
>
> Start the engine with belt fastened but take the car out of Park before
> releasing the parking brake, the brake warning lamp flashes urgently
> and the chime sounds. Release the brake, and *ChimeChime!*
> Congratulations, you released the brake all by yourself.
>
> The parking brake itself is a pedal type unit, with a hand release. The
> pedal itself feels as if it's connected to nothing at all. Put your
> foot on it, and it flies to the floor. It holds the car OK, not as well
> as others I've used. At least it's not one of those obnoxious
> kick-to-apply, kick-to-release types or the import-copycat spacewasting
> hand lever.
>
> Sometimes you get a *Chime!* or *ChimeChime!* for no apparent reason.
> Congratulations, you're super!
>
> The accelerator is a spring-loaded dimmer switch mechanically connected
> to nothing at all. Feedback, there is none. Also, when using the cruise
> control, the pedal stays at the idle position. Want to speed up just a
> little to pass another vehicle? Sure, but you'll have to grope around
> through the accelerator's travel to find the point past which
> additional
> acceleration happens. It would've been a simple matter of programming
> to move that point to the top of the accelerator's travel when the
> cruise is engaged, but they didn't. Instead, they spent their time
> carefully programming the drive-by-wire so that if you blow your nose
> towards the accelerator with the transmission in gear, the force of the
> booger landing
> on the pedal causes the car to lurch. Vroom vroom! Powerful
> acceleration feeling, vroom vroom! I'm sure it makes for impressive
> test drives, but it makes parking garage maneuvering spastic and
> difficult to control. The cruise control continues this theme; the
> "resume" function causes the car to lurch (charge?) ahead with needless
> alacrity and a jarring and noisy downshift. A more gradual return to
> the previously-set speed would be more appropriate.
>
> The horn is all the way in the middle of the steering wheel, coincident
> with the airbag cover. Not a good place. The wheel itself is well
> shaped, so I guess that's something. The window lift switches are
> halfassed in that someone somewhere in the chain of command specified
> intuitive rear-hinged switches (push down to lower the window, pull up
> to raise).
> Fine idea, poorly implemented. There's nothing intuitive about the feel
> of the switches, and they are all crammed together. You have to look
> down at them to get the correct switch and operate it properly, and
> even then, if it's the driver window you want lowered, there's almost
> no detent at all between "down" and "auto down", so frequently the
> window drops out of sight when all that was desired was a 2" air gap.
> The door lock switch is OK, but the manual door lock knobs in the rear
> doors are at the *rear*, not the front, of each door. They cannot be
> reached from the front. Sure, yeah, they're power, so what? Sometimes
> it's necessary or desireable to unlock *one* rear door without futzing
> with the power buttons. Or, for that matter, to look through the
> nearest window to check if the doors are locked or unlocked. You cannot
> see the rear lock buttons from outside.
>
> The gauges are the trendy electroluminescent (or
> faux-electroluminescent) black-on-white variety, and they're plenty
> legible, though automatic cars still don't need tachometers. There is
> no way to turn *off* the IP illumination, only to make it more bright
> or less bright. Um...yeah, thanks, you're right, I didn't really want
> to turn 'em off; if I had really wanted to, you would've let me.
>
> The ignition key, as previously mentioned, is in the dash, *almost*
> where it belongs. You have to insert it at about a 10:30/4:30 angle;
> the "run" position has the key vertical. This isn't a major irritant,
> just a minor one. What's a major irritant is the *huge* delay between
> turning the key to "start" and having the starter engage. I'm not
> talking microseconds
> here; if you insert-and-twist-to-start, there is time for the
> hyperactive chime to go *ChimeChimeChime!* (or for you to sit through a
> long second and a half's silence, depending on the chime's mood) before
> the starter engages. I do not know or care why this is done, but I do
> know it doesn't have to be that way, and that it shouldn't.
>
> The fast windshield rake angle seriously restricts the view outward and
> causes the rearview mirror to obstruct far too much of the important
> part of the forward-rightward view when I adjust my seating position
> for proper vision to the sides and rear. Lower the seat so the rearview
> mirror no longer is such an obstacle, and sideward/rearward visibility
> is
> proportionally hampered. I take especial care to adjust all the
> adjustables to fit me when I get in a car not my own, and even so, a
> two hour highway drive left me cramped in the leg, ankle, left shoulder
> and neck. And I'm right smack in the middle of average height! Body
> fixtures and interior materials are somewhat better than they were in
> the Chrysler products of the early '90s. Legroom's acceptable for a
> 6'5" passenger.
>
> NVH is at about the same level as it was in my 1992 4-cylinder LeBaron
> sedan, which is unacceptable given the interceding 17 model years'
> supposed advances since my '92 was designed, and the fact that my '92
> had almost 150k miles on it when I bought it, while this car had 953
> miles when I picked it up. The power steering pump or something else
> under the hood puts out a constant buzzing, grinding whine that changes
> pitch with engine speed and is audible inside the car with all the
> windows up. H'm...the P/S pump and
> other engine-driven accessories on my '65 Valiant were silent. Ditto my
> '91, and my '92, and my other '91, and my other '92, and my '62, and my
> '89, for that matter. What happened? I've heard this noise on too many
> other new and recent Mopars to dismiss it as a one-off.
>
> The V6 engine has adequate acceleration, with a Taurus-like warbling V6
> engine note that I find very offputting. I don't like V6s.
> Unfortunately, I find the rest of the car so unpleasant that even the
> substitution of a largely-pointless V8 engine wouldn't make me like it.
> It is not fun, relaxing, comfortable rewarding or easy to drive.
>
> I could grouse a fair bit about the car's lighting system, but I'm on
> vacation and deliberately not thinking about car lights.
>
> All in all, I give the car about a C/C+.
>

In article .com>,
Daniel J. Stern > wrote:
>And the beam selection is achieved by pushing the lever
>forward for high beam, pulling rearward for low beam, or pulling extra
>rearward for high beam flash. That's how Japanese cars do it, so it
>must be better, right? (wrong!)

Hmmm, don't recall old Hondas doing it that way, although old Toyotas
did it that way.

>The car comes equipped with about seventy percent of the average
>Buick's Nanny Buttwiper devices; five minutes' effort with the glovebox
>manual and the ignition key shuts off some of them (auto lock, auto
>unlock) but not others.

A rental car with an owner's manual in the glovebox? Wow.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Lee
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome.
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.

Timothy J. Lee wrote:

> In article .com>,
> Daniel J. Stern > wrote:
>
>>And the beam selection is achieved by pushing the lever
>>forward for high beam, pulling rearward for low beam, or pulling extra
>>rearward for high beam flash. That's how Japanese cars do it, so it
>>must be better, right? (wrong!)
>
>
> Hmmm, don't recall old Hondas doing it that way, although old Toyotas
> did it that way.

My 84 Accord was that way. I never liked it. My 06 Sonata is also that
way and I STILL don't like it. Somethings Japanese would have been
better left uncopied by the Koreans.



>>The car comes equipped with about seventy percent of the average
>>Buick's Nanny Buttwiper devices; five minutes' effort with the glovebox
>>manual and the ignition key shuts off some of them (auto lock, auto
>>unlock) but not others.
>
>
> A rental car with an owner's manual in the glovebox? Wow.

My Chrysler minivan rental last summer had the manual in the glove box
still in the shrink wrap. I immediately corrected that problem!

Matt

See it in Europe pretty often, and I doubt we're more honest on the whole.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

"Timothy J. Lee" > wrote in message
...
[..]
>
> A rental car with an owner's manual in the glovebox? Wow.

On 27 Feb 2006 19:21:40 GMT, (Timothy J. Lee)
wrote:

>In article .com>,
>Daniel J. Stern > wrote:
>>And the beam selection is achieved by pushing the lever
>>forward for high beam, pulling rearward for low beam, or pulling extra
>>rearward for high beam flash. That's how Japanese cars do it, so it
>>must be better, right? (wrong!)
>
>Hmmm, don't recall old Hondas doing it that way, although old Toyotas
>did it that way.

That is because they don't do it that way.

*************************
Dave

MoPar Man > wrote in :

> "Daniel J. Stern" wrote:
>
>> Our rental car (from Enterprise) is an '06 Charger.
>
> Did you find that the door sill was too high? (ie could you
> comfortably rest your arm on the door sill with the window open?) Did
> you feel like you were driving a submarine?

Doors are higher because of required side-impact protection.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net