why does the dash have to be hard plastic?

I have a dodge caliber rental car. Why does the dash have to be hard plastic? Why? This car is so insufferably cheap it is insane. It drives OK, but the interior makes me want to go kill myself...

Seats aren't bad, but the headrests are made of foam rubber, no cloth?

Cost cutting measures. And they wonder why mire people don't buy their products.

My previous rental was a camry. Talk about worlds apart. I want to go try a new fusion to see how they compare. I have heard good things.

Dodge hasn't quite caught on to modern interior car design ;) Or doesn't care to catch up...

At my job we rent a few 2008-2010 caravans, I really don't know how they sell over 15k units of these a year (besides as rentals), ours always have under 20k miles, and in all cases, numerous interior pieces are badly faded and/or coming detached!

The sound insulation in back the front fenders is made of loosely put together fiberboard, which is sure to loosen up more when it gets wet whenever it rains...

ignorant wrote: My previous rental was a camry. Talk about worlds apart. I want to go try a new fusion to see how they compare. I have heard good things.

Honestly, after 3 years with the 'newer' 07 Camry SE, I'm not impressed by the quality (it does look nice though IMO), plastic parts are painted 'nice' but scratch with a fingernail, and instead of 'hard' plastic, you have 'soft plastic' that's already starting to disform/curl at the edges. The Camry 'pretends' to be nice, but really is just as crappy as everything else. After a year you'd see this.

Also, the 4cyls have a terrible tendency to develop the dreaded startup shake when the A/C or Defroster is on, feels like the motor mounts aren't there.

Really the Camry looks nice, but is still a cheap POS like all others at this price point (sub 20ish-k), I'm glad my wife's lease is up soon so we can get something else.

I'm just saying, the grass is always greener

Raze wrote: The Camry 'pretends' to be nice, but really is just as crappy as everything else.

If the head rests are covered in cloth and the steering wheel doesn't feel like blow molded plastic, then the Camry wins.. I know nothing about longevity as I've only had them as rentals.

notice how the shine off the headrest is different than the seats..

i can't find the headrest. You are aparently some kind of picture thief. Be careful not to cut yourself on any of the mold parting seams

Wally wrote: i can't find the headrest. You are aparently some kind of picture thief. Be careful not to cut yourself on any of the mold parting seams

what like the razor blades clarkson complains about on the XLR...

what a choad.

It really wouldn't be a bad car, if it weren't so damn cheap.

We had an Avenger for a rental and my friend got a nice cut from the seam on an armrest

Huh. Guy I work with just bought a Caliber and loves it.

I suppose he drives the car instead of fretting over what the interior is made from?

I talked about my rental Caliber here a couple weeks ago. Why does the console come down from the center stack with that weird kink in it that seemed designed to irritate my knee? I can't lean my leg against it without it becoming a pressure point and pain happens within 20 minutes.

I hated the CVT but I don't know that a 4 speed auto would have been better, a manual trans like that Getrag 6 speed that's in a number of small cars would have been preferable. The gas mileage was pretty poor, I averaged below 20 mpg with the thing around Denver when I had it.

I returned it the next day for an Aveo and preferred the Aveo quite a bit. That's pretty scary for Dodge. I did see that Fiat tossed ChryCo some money to improve the Caliber and nearly all of it was spent on the interior. Smart move.

I think if you took one of these with a manual trans, added in some lowering springs, whatever it takes to get the car about 2" lower without impacting ride quality, and then started attacking the interior with Alcantara like the dash top, the door caps, etc then you might have something. The stereo was poor, it was all just kind of a joke, and really I'd rather put the effort into something like a used Protege P5.

have to remember also that rental cars are usually the bottom of the barrel too. About as cheap as they can make them because the rental companies do not want to spend a lot to buy them

mad_machine: I doubt in the extreme that there are two different interiors to the Caliber, one for rentals and one for everyone else. The rental-ness came out with it having manual everything, locks, windows, no internal mirror adjustment at all (I looked and looked, you adjust the exterior mirrors by pushing on them) and no cruise control. That I overlooked because it was, again, a rental. A joke of a rental but still. And the Aveo trounced it here too, it had actual features like electric locks and windows and mirrors and cruise.

I used to sneer at Aveo's, now I almost respect them since they don't seem to be quite so bottom of the barrel like the Caliber.

We had a few coworkers buy various Chryslers recently and they all seem to suffer from the same interior problems. I really don't understand how they got so far off track. Older Chryslers may have been built cheaply, but nothing like the last couple years.

Wally wrote: We had a few coworkers buy various Chryslers recently and they all seem to suffer from the same interior problems. I really don't understand how they got so far off track. Older Chryslers may have been built cheaply, but nothing like the last couple years.

Quoted for trueth.

If chrysler would have put about $500 worth of content into the original Neon, they would have had a great little car, instead of a great little car except for the bad head gaskets, rattly pistons, bad primer and crap interior. I don't think they learned anything, because while the paint usually stays on the second gen Neon, the upholstery looks like an old pair of denim jeans. The Caliber is as bad, but they added bad taste in colors to the mix. I service a red one with a blue panel in the center console.?????

Knurled wrote: Huh. Guy I work with just bought a Caliber and loves it. I suppose he drives the car instead of fretting over what the interior is made from?

maybe he's high off the chemical fumes from the dash.

Speaking of rentals, I had a 2010 Mustang Conv. last week. 6cyl. automatic but at least it was triple black, saving me from total emasculation. It had to be the most uncomfortable, poor visibility, crappy interior, no guts car I've driven in a long time - and I have generally liked the Fords I've driven over the past few years.

It did draw a lot of attention, however I'm not sure if that is good or bad. Mrs. BDT suggested that I needed more bald spot and gold chains. For clarification, more gold chains would be any quantity greater than zero.

Ive noticed all crysler products are getting worse. My parents have a 01 caravan that they bought new, but is now used for dump and home depot runs, and the interior is still nicer than the brand new ones! soft touch dash, nicer carpet, better seats, just plain better materials period. I dont get what happened.

We have 2 PT Cruiser company cars that are total trash - front control arm bushings gone at 60k? Lost a "TIPM" on one around the same time. They drive as bad as they look and get minivan-like mileage.

But apparently some people think they're cute...

what gets me.. the interior is where most car companies cut corners to save money... when it comes to dealing with your car.. where do you spend the most time? I can bet it is not standing next to it, admiring the graceful curves/ jaunty creases/ or wedge shape

Everyone does it. The interiors of just about everything is just plain crap. I look at newer Mercedes all the time and see cheaply molded plastic everywhere, they just soften it so it will 'feel' more 'luxurious'.

It's not just the interiors. Notice the yellowing of the headlights? Happens to just about every car out there.

Tis true: modern interiors don't seem to (on average) hold up as well as the '80s-early 90's stuff. I'm generalizing of course, but hard plastic and molding flash seems more common than ever. I wasn't impressed with the '08 Mustang interior I rented a while back, and it was 18 years newer than my newest car at the time!

Any interior part that can be injection molded out of plastic is. It's cheap and repeatable. Even the parts that aren't hard plastic are injection molded plastic covered in pleather with a layer of foam between.

BTW, I've heard that a lot of the soft IPs have a problem with leash through from the foam layer.

It's all made as cheap as possible. The majority of the cost of a new car isn't the parts that make up the car but the labor that goes into putting it together. Labor cost isn't going to decrease so cost has to be cut somewhere else to keep the cost of a new car down at a level that the customer will pay for.

I don't know about the '80s being better than current stuff. Plastics technology has come a long way, the interior of my 944 was a mess - no matter how well you take care of it the dash will crack. The 04 jetta seems much better, but of course it is 20 years newer, it just seems that it will stand the time better. i'll have to get back to you in 2024.