[UN4GTBL]

Great to hear!

 

[UN4GTBL]

A 200 with 26K miles is a new car. Try towing a 10,000 GVW 24 foot enclosed trailer (loaded) with a 1993 360 Magnum Ramcharger 150 over the same distance (in August) twice with no issues.

I was told a long time ago by an old racer that as long as you maintain them and don't do anything stupid, Mopars will never let you down. Durability has most often not been an issue - just the peripheral "fluff stuff."

Unfortunately, people's expectations are that their vehicles endure despite giving them reasonable care.

Agreed.

My Caliber has never left me stranded or died on me. But, that doesn't mean that the constant replacing of my front suspension, or other parts is a good thing either. That falls under durability for me. A 6 year old vehicle with less than 70,000km should not have had the front suspension replaced twice, nor should it need it a third time, as it sounds mine does now.

None of our other Chrysler vehicles have ever left us stranded, or just died, but it's the little things that get annoying (and expensive) after a while.

 

[UN4GTBL]

Since the cost of repair is so expensive nowadays (nothing is cheap anymore!) you get killed even on the small things. Thanks to the Daimler effect (affect), there were alot of things like this that went wrong. This is why the whole DBAG with Cerberus follow-up was probably the worst thing that could have happenened. It's amazing that were still around but this is what Mopar is all about - doing more with less.

Absolutely.

The ironic thing is that our '07 Caravan that we had for about the same mileage (over 4 years though) didn't have a single problem. Granted that was a vehicle that was at the end of it's life, unlike my Caliber which was a first-year vehicle.

I was told that the Lancer uses similar suspension parts as the Caliber, and the ones that constantly fail on the Caliber are stamped steel, where the ones on the Lancer are all aluminum, and don't have the same issues. It's this penny pinching under dumbler that really ruins a vehicle. I would have gladly spent an extra $1-2k on my Caliber if it had better quality parts.