The Kia Optima: Dodge Caliber sedan simulator?
The most interesting things about the new World Engine are now, to me, its distinctive flavor and its inability to produce satisfying low-rev power. Admittedly, my primary driver is a 2.4 turbo - a long-stroke engine that does get moving from low revs-per-minute - but I’m not so far away from the old ‘95 Neon to remember what an ordinary four cylinder is like.
The World Engine in the Caliber provides decent enough gas mileage considering the weight it has to pull around, but power is another story. Many blame the CVT, and even I singled out the CVT’s characteristics for making the Caliber seem sluggish, but the engine feels similar in the Kia Optima. Buzzy, reluctant to move at low rpm, and demon quick once it’s up in its small power band, near redline. That’s all kind of funny because Hyundai/Kia has rather different “dressings” on the engine - each company using these things uses their own heads, valve systems, and fuel delivery systems. Yet it feels the same with the Hyundai trim as it does with the Dodge trim.
The Optima I’m driving has the 2.4 liter engine, the top of the line until you get into the not-yet-produced turbo models, which promise far better power. Unlike the Caliber, the Optima is tuned with a steep tip-in, which means that a gentle touch on the gas pedal dumps a lot of fuel into the engine, which is all very nice for feeling like you have a powerful car but not so good for easy, gentle driving or stop and go traffic (I notice Volvo likes to do that now, too.) But when it comes right down to it, the Optima with the World Engine is not responsive at all, unless you shift yourself and stay in high rpms. The engine feels like there’s a huge rubber band between the gas pedal and the throttle, and once the band tightens you snap forward.
The Optima feels remarkably like the Caliber, though they are on completely different platforms, with darned little other than the basic engine block in common. The instrument panel is a mix of original thinking and 300M-style bright rings around big gauges, and is very attractive, much more so (to me at least) than that of the Caliber and certainly more than the Sebring’s mixed-metaphor interior.
Based on this experience, I can almost see why there’s no Dodge Caliber sedan. Reviewers are harsher critics of cars than SUVs in my experience; they even let the RX330 and Ford Explorer get rave reviews, while trashing the Ford 500 and, yes, the current Dodge Stratus. I can’t see them giving a thumbs up to a Dodge that acts and sounds like this Kia, and don’t tell me it wouldn’t, because the Caliber does. And it’s gotten some flack for that, with reservations that it does have an SUV shape and look, so it must hold a lot of stuff. (Note that I don’t necessarily agree with that positive assessment.)
So I have to say… Chrysler Group, don’t put the PT onto the Caliber platform. Adapt the current PT/Neon platform to flexible manufacturing somehow, make it work for safety and weight reduction, and then make a PT-based sedan using the 2.4 liter engine - not the World Engine, but the current one. Start a crash four-cylinder engine design program. Admit that using Hyundai as the genesis for a new block didn’t work out quite as you expected it to, and figure out something else. Apply the greatness that characterizes the Chrysler Group engine design department, that has always characterized that department, that has made practically every single engine every engineered at Chrylser into a winner, and get us a new four-cylinder. In the meantime, we have the Neon engine out there, ready to be adapted with variable-valve technology and kept alive for a few more years. We have the remains of the incredibly successful Neon chassis - successful in terms of low cost and high performance, not public perception - use it. Just whatever you do, no matter how much I ask you to do it, don’t tell me or anyone else that it’s from the Neon! Say, um, that Mercedes graciously came down to Earth and dropped it in Chrysler’s lap.
We won’t tell if you won’t.