Sunday, November 20, 2011

Dodge Caliber

I was in DC on a business trip for a week recently. With an exception of say New York, anywhere else, you need a car to move around. A quick ring to Enterprise Rent-A-Cara company did get me this, Dodge Caliber 2.0(A). Starting rent rate is quite cheap honestly speaking at USD40 but the moment I added up basic insurance, gps and sales tax, the rate per day is USD82. Oh well…

The Caliber to me is a typical American kinda design with bold looks, tall and high ground clearance. Treat it as scaled down and baby Dodge Charger with a meager 2.0 litre engine mated with CVT gearbox. Pretty cool considering at that time Dodge Charger is not available for rent. The engine, if I can recalled correctly derived from joint venture between Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Hyundai; is relatively brisk for entry level 2.0 NA. Still I got left behind 10 tiangs on traffic light drag with an old school Passat 1.8T. That’s about the only pluses I can say about the car.

The steering feel is non-existence through the turns like an SUV than a hatchback and body control is poor. Straight “As” flop. That’s probably the reason why I won’t bother in illustrating any further like other cars I’ve reviewed.

It’s far too crude and coarse inside out to be genuine rival to Focus, Golf or even Corolla. But for aunties who own small SUVs and not clearly educated on driving quality, this Caliber might make a weird kind of sense.

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