| Marketplace | Services | Contact Us | Community | Arts & Entertainment | Local Guides | |||
|
|||
|
On Wheels by Brooks Peterson Archives | Arts & Entertainment | Audio/Video | Business | Classifieds | Columns | Food | Forums | Health & Fitness | News | Obits | Opinions | People | Politics | Science/Technology | Search | Sports | Subscribe | Travel | Weather Saturday, June 16, 2001 Stratus R/T is fit for a chase scenePowerful Dodge coupe delivers all the drama a sensible motorist needs
This one, however, has a little something extra stirred into the mix. To borrow the phrase immortalized by . . . who? Ring Lardner, maybe? Damon Runyon? Susan Sontag? . . . A story goes with it. The nice people who let me borrow their sleek silver Dodge Stratus R/T Coupe related a strange and terrible tale, albeit one with a happy ending: This proud beauty was abducted from their premises by a fellow with larceny in his heart and lead in his right foot. Before the drama was over, he had led the South Texas gendarmerie a merry chase through five or six counties, finally coming to a halt somewhere around Brownsville - and then only because he had run out of gas. At least one DPS officer was all but dumbstruck by the experience, my host recalled: "Man," the trooper said, "that car is fast." Is this significant? Absolutely - not just because it adds a little drama and color to this piece, but because it signals just what a departure the Stratus R/T Coupe represents from its immediate predecessor. The Dodge Avenger
I refer to the Dodge Avenger, an entirely decent machine that was easy to like but which in all likelihood would have posed no challenge to the Crown Victorias of the constabulary. Even with the optional V-6, you were looking at a lackluster 163 horsepower in the Avenger. (Irritating parenthetical digression: Who can tell me the last vehicle to bear the Avenger name? The Hillman Avenger, sold very briefly in this country as the Plymouth Cricket. Amaze your friends.) With the top-of-the-line R/T, you not only get a lusty 3-liter V-6 good for 200 healthy horses; you get your choice of an automatic or a five-speed manual. All of this firepower, our friends at Dodge tell us, adds up to a zero-to-60 mph time of 6.55 seconds. Can you say "Wooo-haa"? Fuel mileage You even get decent fuel mileage: With the V-6 and five-speed, 20 in town and 28 on the road (on premium, by the way). More good news: The five-speed on our tester was impressively precise. Not so long ago, that wasn't always the case with FWD vehicles. Assuming you can scare up a curve or two down here in the Great Flatness, you'll find that the R/T delivers handling of a high order, especially for a front-driver. Head into a sweeper - say an expressway feeder ramp - and the car finds its line like a heat-seeking missile.
One caution: You'd be well advised to use a little restraint until you and the car are completely comfortable with one another. With all that poke, Mr. Torque Steer will put in an appearance if you let things get out of hand. Drive like an adult. OK: like a young adult. So, OK, you're moving briskly along. What about the other part of the equation: Are you looking good? I mean, all that punch isn't going to do you or your image much good if you're driving a Plymouth Volaré lookalike, now, is it? A slick piece of work Not to worry: As you can see from the accompanying photos, the R/T is a slick piece of work. Oddly, the front end seems marginally less impressive than the Avenger's, but given the differential in performance and personality, who cares? If you keep track of such things, it might interest you to know that the Stratus Coupe (with its sibling, the Chrysler Sebring Coupe) is built on Mitsubishi Eclipse underpinnings. Like just about every new design these days, it boasts substantially more structural rigidity than its predecessors. What it doesn't boast, strangely, is front-seat legroom. It has been quite a while since I drove the Avenger, but I don't recall the quarters being quite so tight. I could handle it - barely - but anyone seriously tall, say 6'-3" and above, would find the situation, ah, challenging. Wait: There's more. The vertically challenged as well as the lofty have an issue to address. For the petite, it's the fact that the bobtail format makes rear visibility problematical - particularly when you've got the handsome but view-obstructing rear spoiler smack in the middle of your field of vision. CD changer is a plus The interior is nicely finished - optional (slippery) leather seating surfaces, a nice array of gauges that are bathed in a sort-of-orange light at night that works a bit better than the reds and blues I've experienced elsewhere. The boomy four-disc in-dash CD changer was another plus; and the A/C delivered cold comfort even at high noon. Under odds and ends, file the fact that you have a genuinely cavernous trunk - and it can become more cavernous still if you fold the rear seatbacks forward. And, finally, if you're parking next to a high curb, alert your front-seat passenger to exercise a bit of restraint with the really wide doors, lest you acquire an unwanted ding. As for the rest, it's up to you. The Avenger is dead, or at least snoozing. Welcome its successor with blare of trumpet and clash of (Stratus) cymbals. 
© 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved. |
 |
 |
|
