One of my favorite auto reviews, Michael Karesh at thetruthaboutcars.com, has posted his review of the brand new Dodge Journey. It's linked here. Quite frankly, William Hung has received better reviews. The Dodge Journey replaces one of Chrysler's bread and butter vehicle lines, the short-wheelbase minivans. In this case, it appears that bread and butter has been replaced with government cheese.
I can actually save you some time in reading Michael Karesh's review. He thought the Journey handled alright, but he didn't like anything else about it. Note: if you follow Karesh's reviews at epinions.com, you'll find that he has scoured the car lots to find a three-row vehicle that is practical, but fun to drive. He didn't find it here. As far as quality control is concerned, here's a quote:
And then there's quality control…The V6 had a quarter-inch of water in the front
passenger floorboard (promptly extracted via shop vac). The source was soon
revealed, as a gurgle could periodically be heard from the perimeter of the
sunroof and water rained down from the overhead console throughout the test
drive. Get this: it wasn't raining outside the car at the time; it had rained the previous
day.
The Journey is actually the stretched-wheelbase, station wagon version of the Dodge Avenger. The Avenger has the dubious achievement of being the lowest scoring family sedan in Consumer Reports' current rankings, trailing even its loathsome stablemate, the Chrysler Sebring. In other words, I didn't have high expectations for the Journey.
Striking out with a new product is especially problematic for Chrysler, a company whose new product pipeline is not exactly filled to the brim. Now, let's say I'm a struggling auto maker, and I'm introducing an important new model at a very difficult time. I would say that it would generally be a bad idea to ship one to a reviewer that leaks like a sieve. It seems like Chrysler would do well to restart a production line with the old style (paid for) minivan, and plan on updating the powertrain as soon as possible. The Journey doesn't improve on price, space, performance, fuel efficiency or (probably) quality. In my opinion, it doesn't even improve on looks.
In the spirit of fairness, if I see a review of the Journey that contradicts what Mr. Karesh has to say, I'll mention it in the blog. If I get the chance to test one, I'll publish that as well.
By the way, the UAW is not responsible for the mess that Chrysler made of the Journey, the Journey is built in Mexico.
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