I just took delivery of my third Durango, a 2007 with a greatly improved
front end..like the Nitro. ..I usually put 35,000 miles a year on them and this
is my second in the latest series. I order them fairly well loaded and
always tow my car hauler so the tow package is required as are the skid plates
for Colorado mountain roads. I find the 5.7 Hemi to be excellent and at
300 feet above sea level or lower can get over 20mpg on the high
way. Around town 15-16 mpg. That isn't speculation but what I
get.... NO body ever accused a Land Cruiser (aka Land Crusher) or the land
barges from Nissan to be very well styled or particularly economical.
On durability, I just today did a brake job on my son's 2000 Dodge
Stratus...2.4L and it has 165,000 miles and the engine is very quiet and does
not burn any oil...He thinks he will get 300,000 miles before he replaces it..we
gotta quite thinking only Japanese do that.
The Durango is an excellent SUV and the 2007 is the best yet. But
that is from experience , not somebody's neighbors kid's girlfriend.
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If the argument is corporate bottom line, then nothing
above makes good arguing points. Chrysler Corp. is once again in
trouble.
Performance-wise, a 1957 Dodge V-8 town wagon would do
what a new Durango would do, so what's to get excited about ? This is what
Chrysler has to offer for 50 years of product development ? I know for a
fact that a 2000 Stratus comes nowhere close to 40 mpg.
My point is not that Chrysler builds not-so-great
cars. They build perfectly fine cars. But if Chrysler wants to find
their way out of the woods from the standpoint of being a sovereign corporate
entity and taking more market share, they need a new game plan. Somewhere
in this mix, I thought we were comparing what Exner and Colbert did in 1957 to
the product line to make it exciting and different. My product loyalty is
with fins and chrome first. Practicality second. Since fins and chrome are
no longer a new car option, when it comes to new cars, my loyalty follows
practicality with a caveat of rejection for just being too damned ugly thrown
in.
If you like your new Durango, and hope that Chrysler
survives as a company, better hope everyone else buys one too, or
they may go the way of Packard by losing identity and following.
I am just sick of all the hype that new cars are
exciting. Remember when new car introductions rated close to a National
holiday ? My benchmark is a 57 Adventurer. Build something that
exciting again and Toyota will be in the trouble Chrysler is in.
I guess we can all just wait and see what today's
plastic jellybean offerings are going to do for Chrysler in the next year or
two.
B.
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