Dodge Magnum

I'm thinking I should start doing little reviews of the cars I rent. Or maybe not. But I wanted to comment on the Dodge Magnum that I drove around Houston last week. When these were first released, I really liked the idea. Rear wheel drive, lots of power, unique look. They got some bad reviews on rear visibility, which is to be expected. And in the end, no matter how cool you think it might be, it's still a Dodge.

Anyway, I had a few comments on the garden-variety rental version I had. This was a standard automatic 6 cylinder (no Hemi for me).

PROs:

• A good amount of power. Stomping on the pedal got you moving fairly quickly.
• Roomy interior - lots of leg and head room in the front, the rear looked good size, and the trunk seemed to be accessible. Not huge, but better than either a sedan trunk or a hatch back.

CONs:

• Poor driver's seat. No lateral support. Taking a normal turn at highway speeds means you start to roll out of the seat. You shouldn't have to grasp the steering wheel tighter to stay seated. My old TBird had nice side bolsters that kept you in place and that was 10 years ago!
• Lame handling. Good power, but the back end is where all the power is and the weight isn't. Hit the gas on a turn and you feel it get awfully squirrelly awfully quickly. That's a bad combination - especially with a little wetness on the roads. It didn't inspire confidence as a go-fast car, that's for sure.
• Rear window sucks. First, it's is horribly small, with all these pillars all over the back cargo area. Visibility is bad. But what's really laughable is this little tiny windshield wiper they stuck on the back. The window there is somewhat vertical, so a wiper may be required in low-speed, heavy-precipitation driving. But the glass is very wide and very short. With this limiting aspect ratio, they stuck a very tiny wiper there in the middle. The edges don't get cleared at all -- you just get this little peephole in the middle of the window. Either do it right or don't do it at all. I wouldn't have missed it during the rain if it wasn't there; I would just turn on the rear defroster and deal. Otherwise, if you have to stick a wiper back there, put two. Or one big one mounted on the side. Something, anything, better than what ended up there. It was just silly embarrassing to turn this thing on in traffic.
• Ignition location. What's wrong with the steering column anymore? If you're doing something fancy with fobs, okay, move it around and be stylish. But this one was flat against the dash behind the steering wheel. A good place for the various fog light or other switches, but it housed just the ignition all alone. Along the steering column this rather ugly but necessary area is hidden away most of the time. It's just ugly there. Negative style points and no added convenience.
• Cruise control stick location was poor. The wipers and turn signals were located on one stick on the left side of the steering wheel (no on-wheel controls). And the cruise control was on a smaller stick, slightly further back and slightly up. More than once my first day in the car I hit this little tiny twig with the typical force of a turn signal and I thought it would break. Just a poor design choice. What's wrong with the other side of the steering wheel? I hope this car has an option to put all this on the steering wheel, then it's not an issue. But it just harked back to old cars with 3 or 4 different wands poking out of the steering column.

I could nit-pick some more. The wiper controls were counter intuitive. You push the headlight switch to toggle the fog lights, but it wasn't clear at first how to turn on all the interior lights. The arm rest along the door was in the wrong position. The gas tank lid was kind of flippy floppy and not clear how to open. Do you push it to pop? There's no dent to indicate you just pull it, but that's how you got it open. Cheap.

If the high-end SRT version also comes with a major suspension upgrade, it might be worth considering. But it's still kind of hard to justify that much $$ just for the Hemi name. After all, it is still a Dodge.