PT Cruiser From Chrysler: It’s a Head-Turner
America’s other luxury car brand, best known for its lumbering minivans and yacht-sized sedans, is rolling out the long-awaited 2001 PT Cruiser later this month, and the automotive world may never be the same.
Chrysler certainly won’t: For the first time in memory, it has a mass-production model that has customers standing in line and dealers demanding premium prices.
The U.S. division of transatlantic giant DaimlerChrysler also has a car that will carry the Chrysler nameplate around the world. As much as 20% of the PT Cruiser’s eventual annual production of 185,000 units is destined for Europe and Asia. That contrasts with just 6% of Chrysler’s minivans and its Jeep division’s sport-utility vehicles.
Though some may call it a truck (see accompanying story), the PT Cruiser is Chrysler’s first “international small car,” to use the term preferred by Tom Gale, chief of design and product planning for all of DaimlerChrysler’s North American operations.
More than that, though, is the “PT” in the Cruiser’s name. It stands for “personal transportation,” and the vehicle creates an entirely new segment in the automotive market: a crossover that doesn’t pretend to be an SUV; a car-truck blend that offers plenty of utility but still manages to ooze personality.
During a drive through San Diego County last week in a pre-production model, other motorists blocked intersections and swerved dangerously close at freeway speeds to get a look. Several pedestrians stumbled off sidewalks as their heads swung around to follow the vehicle down the street.
In upscale La Jolla--where luxury BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes-Benzes easily outnumber economy cars--an elegantly dressed woman in a $75,000 Mercedes S-Class sedan frantically motioned for us to roll down our window as her preteen son bounced in the back seat, grinning at the Cruiser and giving us a vigorous thumbs-up.
“How do you like it?” the woman shouted above the traffic noise. “It looks so nice.”
We didn’t have the heart to tell her that she could have three fully loaded Cruisers and $10,000 or so in change for about what her new Benz had cost.
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The Cruiser is a vehicle that proves form and function don’t have to be consigned to separate platforms, with impressive interior flexibility and zippy performance with the standard five-speed transmission, all wrapped inside one of the niftiest body styles to hit the market since Ford introduced the Mustang in 1964.
By Chrysler’s count, the seats can be configured 26 ways, to enable owners to pack in a huge variety of passenger and cargo combinations.
Although it is a full 5 inches shorter than a Dodge Neon, the Cruiser, with its removable rear seats stowed in the garage, has more cargo capacity than the Lexus RX 300.
With the rear seats folded flat and the front passenger seat in optional flipped-down mode, you could stow an 8-foot stepladder inside. Indeed, the Cruiser’s total interior volume of 120.2 cubic feet meets the government’s minimum for a large car.
Think 1937 Ford or Plymouth delivery van as interpreted by a contemporary hot-rod stylist and shrunk by 20% to fit on a small-car platform.
“The exterior will draw customers to the dealerships, but it’s the interior that will sell it,” says Tony Richards, Chrysler’s vice president for small-car operations.
Good luck finding a base model when the cars start arriving at dealerships from the factory in Toluca, Mexico (see story, G1). But if you do, that base sticker of $16,000 plus taxes and license fees will fetch a five-passenger vehicle with a 2.4-liter, 150-horsepower, four-cylinder engine mated to a sporty five-speed manual transmission.
A four-speed automatic transmission is optional across the line, though it can’t take advantage of the engine’s torque curve and turns an otherwise peppy PT into a Pretty Torpid Cruiser indeed. It will still get you to 90 mph on the freeway (the speedo is calibrated to 120), but it takes forever to get there, and on steep hills your best bet is to row through the automatic’s range settings as if it were a manual.
Perhaps Chrysler’s powertrain engineers can fine-tune the automatic--or come up with a new one--for second-year cars.
While the Cruiser’s performance and handling aren’t a match for the Mitsubishi Eclipse or Toyota Celica, it behooves potential customers--and critics--to remember that this Chrysler wasn’t designed to be a car for the street racer, as design chief Gale frequently reminds. “It is a vehicle for everyone,” he insists.
That aside, there are plenty of hints from the Chrysler camp that a GT Cruiser model, featuring either a performance-tuned V-6 or a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, is in the works. Which would give Chrysler a car for the twentysomethings who demand to be different: a cure for the all-too-common Civic.
For now, the Cruiser’s mild tuning helps it generate some pretty respectable fuel-economy numbers--the U.S. government rating is 20 miles per gallon around town for both manual and automatic versions, and 26 mpg highway for the manual, 25 for the automatic.
What else will that $16,000 (or more) buy? Standard equipment includes front disc brakes, 15-inch wheels and tires, power windows, air conditioning, dual front air bags, a child-seat anchorage system, carpeted front and rear floor mats, tinted glass, white instrument gauge faces, folding and removable rear seats and a six-speaker stereo with a cassette player and built-in controls for a compact disc changer. There are also four cup holders, mesh cargo pockets on the backs of the front seats and good-sized map pockets on both front doors, and an adjustable rear package tray that serves as a tailgate picnic table in one of its five positions.
Fit and finish are as good as anything Chrysler has produced in recent years, with tight-sealing doors and windows that keep out road noise and unwanted breezes, and smooth-flowing body lines that aren’t interrupted by gaps and bumps where there shouldn’t be any.
The Cruiser’s standard suspension will do most drivers just fine, but it is softer, with more body roll, than the performance suspension available in the “touring group” option package or as standard equipment on the upscale Limited Edition.
The standard cloth-covered front seats are called low-back buckets but are more like the captain chairs in a minivan than true buckets. They are comfortable, but they don’t hold you in place very well during hard cornering. The Limited Edition’s leather- and suede-covered seats seemed to offer a bit more support.
Nearly all the special treatments on the Limited Edition--including 16-inch wheels and tires and a four-wheel anti-lock disc brake system with low-speed traction control--are available in various options packages.
But discriminating buyers shouldn’t worry. Chrysler has already put dozens of Cruisers into the hands of aftermarket performance and appearance equipment companies. By this time next year there should be scores of products out there to make the cars go faster, sound sweeter, ride lower and look neater (several firms are working on kits to make the Cruiser a faux woody).
All in all, the PT Cruiser looks like a winner, for the consumer and the auto maker: Early estimates are that Chrysler will earn $2,500 on each Cruiser and will sell all it can make. That’s about $465 million a year at full production.
Chrysler says the PT Cruiser was designed with a “love me or hate me but don’t ignore me” attitude. It is pretty hard, though, to find someone who doesn’t love its looks.
Jim Hossack, an analyst with AutoPacific Inc. in Tustin, calls the PT Cruiser a “hip station wagon.” Chrysler has come up with something it has long lacked, he notes: “an aspirational car with charisma,” which is to say a moderately priced vehicle that gives entry-level buyers a goal to shoot for.
And, as the nice La Jolla lady in the Mercedes showed, it has chops to attract the upscale buyer as well.
Final word: You might have to stand in line for the first few months, and it isn’t a car for speed demons, large families or those who tow heavy loads or spend lots of time on steep mountain roads. Otherwise, if it tickles your fancy and fits your budget, go for it.
