Chrysler fumbles the ball

A few years ago I went to a GM "Drive and Compare" event where they had a bunch of GM as well as other makes of cars and trucks for people to drive and compare. They had fun courses set up for doing fast laps, s-turns, hard turns, etc and you could drive whatever you wanted, by yourself, and at meaningful speeds, I think they asked you to keep it under 60. You could drive the course as many times as you wanted as long as you had the time to stand in line. The main course, with Camaro's, Mustangs, and Corvettes took around 3 minutes to run. They had other courses with Caddy's, Mercs and BMWs to compare. And the GM products held their own in most cases and in pretty much every case cost a heck of a lot less then anything that beat them by much.

Local paper said Chrysler was doing a similar even this weekend at the local Bob Bondurant track. Wow, that should be fun you'd think. A REAL track so probably MORE fun then the GM event.

Yet somehow Chrysler managed to turn it into a snooze fest. There were only about a hundred people there, if that many. (There were probably close to 500 at the GM event) Out of Six cars in the "you can drive it" tent they only wanted you to drive two of them and they actually marked your ID card with an X each time you went thru. And they had a chaperon go with you!!! The main course took about 40 seconds to run. The first time I went thru the guy who rode shotgun was pretty cool, and never tried to slow me down, not that I got carried away, probably never got over 50 or 60. The course consisted of a straightaway with a stop sign at the end, maybe an eighth of a mile long and then they had set up a small circle to drive around, in a circle, to see how their electronic stability control would keep you from going off the road. Jammed on the brakes full force to test the ABS as the stop sign and then went into the circle.

Went thru the circle with quite a bit of power and their ESC in the 300M worked well. Then out the circle to the next leg, which was another 1-8 mile with a single small s-curve in the middle. Very easy to flog your way thru, then to the end of that leg which was a left turn to the last leg which was another 1-8 mile or less and simply took you to the exit. WOW, what a thrill....not.....Hardly enough to make much judgment about the cars. All I could tell was that the 300M had pretty good pickup although the suspension felt a little on the soft side. Just not enough of a test drive to form any significant opinion.

How you might wonder could they make that any more boring as a test drive??? Well, enter chaperon number two when I took the wheel of a Crossfire with weaselboy in the right seat. Same course, headed toward the start of the straightaway and weaselboy says, "Don't go over 30 mph" Is he serious??? Does Chrysler think they are going to sell these cars by having people test drive them at no more then 30 mph?? Ignoring him I blasted thru it like the first time and at about 45 mph weaselboy pipes up again with "keep it under 30!!".. I'm nearing the stop sign so I once again lock up the brakes. Weaselboy doesn't look happy. Then power thru the circle of rest to test the ESC and head down the next leg toward the baby s-curve. "KEEP IT UNDER 30!!!" chimes weaselboy again as we hit the s. I felt like throwing the little turd under the wheels or out the window. What a waste of time.

Next stop is the "Thrill-ride" as Chrysler calls it. Here you get to sit in a car as one of their "professional" drivers takes you thru a course similar to the one GM let us flog by ourselves but it's only about 1-3 as long. I'm sure it was fun for the "professional driver" but pretty much a snoozer as a pbuttenger, I've made pbuttengers more excited on my commute to work.

Next stop the "Drag Strip". Another 1-8 mile straight course up and another 1-8 back in the other lane. Ran this with a turbo PT Cruiser. Definitely convinced me I would not want to own one. Acceleration was OK, nothing to write home about, but the thing had constant wheel nibbling and torque steer the whole way down the strip. I think I drove something else too but the whole experience was so banal I don't even recall what it was.

The high point actually was seeing the 56 and 61 Imperials they had under their tent. Those were the days of STYLE!!!

If Chrysler thinks this kind of "drive" will sell cars they are either very stupid or else their customers are.