The IT Nerd

Before I give my final verdict on the Dodge Dart Limited, let me wrap up a few loose ends. First of all, my wife and I took it shopping. Here’s how our haul fit into the trunk:

We fit two baskets of food and we had a ton of space left over. Next we took the Dart cross country skiing at Hardwood Ski And Bike which is an hour north of Toronto. Thus we had to use the ski pass thru:

It works well, but I would highly recommend using it with a ski bag to keep things from flying about in the event of a panic stop. Hint to Dodge: Other car companies (and I am thinking of BMW and Mercedes Benz when I say this) either have a logo’ed ski bag included with the car or as a low cost option. I think you’re missing an opportunity here.

Skiing requires some gear and some munchies. Here’s how that looked in the trunk:

Again, there’s a ton of space left over. I’m impressed. However, the trunk lacked a proper handle. So while you can open it from inside the car or from the key fob which will keep your hands clean, you will get your hands dirty closing it.

One other thing: The Dart handled itself well in the snow both when my wife and I went skiing as well as during a snowstorm this past Friday. As long as you have a set of snow tires, you’re good to go.

I’ll also make note of something else. The Dart Limited comes with puddle lights for front passengers:

And rear passengers:

Nice touch! Speaking of lights, the Dart Limited comes with HID headlights which light the way in front of you exceptionally well. Not only that, they’re of the automatic variety which turn themselves on and off depending on the light conditions. I liked the fact that the threshold where the lights turn is pretty high. The lights turn on when light begins to get low rather than when the light is low. That’s a great safety feature.

My final fuel economy at the end of this? 7.5 L/100 KM. This was in city and highway traffic. I also had to deal with stop and go traffic as well. Very impressive!

So, would I get a Dodge Dart. I would have to say yes. It’s a good car to live with and I love the fuel economy that I got during this test along with the power the engine put out. It’s a well appointed car at this trim level with a good amount of content. Including UConnect which I was extremely impressed with. I also felt that with 10 airbags and a pile of electronic overseers on board, I was safe as can be. I did have a few gripes, but nothing that turned me off the car. I should point out that the Limited trim level as I tested it is $30,560 CAD. That’s on the upper end of what I would pay for a compact car and it still has another trim level to go. I’d be more likely to pick a lower trim level to save some cash as the Dart starts from $15,995 CAD with 6 trim levels to choose from. Having said all of that, the Limited trim level is a very nice car. Those who choose it will love it.

Dodge has a great car on it’s hands here. Though I will note that I only saw two other Darts on the road while driving this one. That’s a shame as this is a great car and there should be more of them out there. If you’re looking for a compact car, you should seriously look at the Dodge Dart. It’s well designed and well executed and something that should get the attention of Honda, Ford, Toyota among others because it is that good. If this is what’s coming from Dodge in the near future, there’s a lot to look forward to.

This part of the review covers the technology in the Dodge Dart Limited that I’m driving this week.

Let’s start with the safety technology. It has the usual Traction Control, Stability Control and ABS electronic overseers to keep you safe. But adding to that are 10 airbags. That includes two knee airbags and rear seat airbags. That makes this car pretty safe in the event of a crash. It also has a backup camera with rear backup sensors and cross traffic alerts. A nice touch, but there is a bit of a flaw to this. The backup camera is fully exposed to the elements which means dirt and crud can cover it making it next to useless. Now to be fair the Dodge Dart isn’t the only vehicle to have this problem. But when the Hyundai Elantra GT which plays in the same space and price point as the Dart hides their backup camera behind the Hyundai logo and deploys it only when needed it to keep it free from dirt and crud, it should make someone at Dodge rethink the placement of their camera.

This particular dart comes with remote keyless entry along with remote start and push to start. What does that mean? Tap the remote start button twice on the key fob and the car powers up. Let it warm up for a few minutes then walk up the car and pull on the drivers door handle. All four doors unlock and you can get in and push the start button (there’s no key that needs to be inserted). Fasten your seat belt and drive away. I leveraged that ability every day this past week as it was minus 11 C which is frigid and I wanted a warm car to drive in. I loved it but I will note this. There was one occasion where I did all of the above and when I went to push the start button, the alarm went off. I had to exit the car and I then pushed the panic button on the key fob to make it stop. I got back in and this time it did what I expected. I can only conclude that for whatever reason it didn’t detect the key fob in the car. I wasn’t able to replicate the problem, so I have to assume it was just one of those things.

Speaking of the key fob, here’s a hidden trick that it has:

It has a hidden emergency key. Nice!

Now let’s talk about the dash. As I mentioned when I looked at the interior, it’s highly customizable. You can have it display turn by turn directions, currently playing music. and fuel economy among other things. Speaking of the latter, one handy thing that you can do is to make it display the fuel economy with a flower around it. The more complete the flower on the display, the more fuel efficient you’re driving is. This isn’t new as I first saw something similar in the Ford Fusion a few years ago. But my wife who is a fan of this sort of thing liked this much more than the “leaves” that Ford did at the time. I have to admit that I can’t disagree.

Now, there’s the UConnect system that is powered by a massive 8.4 inch touchscreen. It controls pretty much every aspect of the Dart from the HVAC system, audio, phone, navigation, etc. Though I will note that there are redundant audio, and HVAC controls on the steering wheel and the centre console. I’m going to stick my neck out a bit and make a very bold statement. It’s the best and easiest system of this type that I have used. Period. Here’s why:

• The navigation system is from Garmin. Dodge makes no attempt to hide it and it and that’s a good thing as it gives people the “warm fuzzies” because consumers are already familiar with their aftermarket navigation systems. Not only that, it is superior to any other built in system in any late model car that I’ve driven recently. Why other car companies don’t do something similar, I have no idea. 
• The voice recognition was excellent. As long as I used commands that it recognized, UConnect had no issues doing what I told it to do. The command structure is simple and takes about 15 to 30 minutes to learn.
• Speaking of voice recognition, it doesn’t try to do everything. It only does the things it has to do. You can change radio stations, music tracks, phone your wife, enter directions into the navigation system. It doesn’t however adjust the HVAC system. I’m fine with that. I think that most people will be too.
• Pairing my Blackberry Torch was really simple. Ditto for my wife’s iPhone 5. In fact, you can pair 7 phones to it. I could then make phone calls easily and receive them easily as well. The sound quality was excellent on both ends of the conversation.
• I plugged my wife’s iPhone 5 into the USB port and it not only recognized all the tracks and playlists within 5 minutes. Then it played any song I threw at it. By that I mean AAC files and MP3 which was not the experience I had when I reviewed the Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus a month ago.
• The sound quality from the associated audio system was excellent. It was crisp, clear and had great range regardless of where you sat.
• The user interface is clear and easy to use. Anybody can walk up to this car and use it without having to crack open the manual. That’s a huge plus.

Was it perfect? No. The only thing that I did find wrong with this was that the system was capable of reading things like text messages and responding to them. But neither my Blackberry Torch nor my wife’s iPhone 5 could leverage that. I’m guessing that there needs to be better support of a protocol called Message Access Profile which makes all of this happen. Thus I’m sensing an update to UConnect is in the works. But having said that, both yours truly and my wife were able to use the system easily and within minutes of getting the car. I couldn’t say that with other systems of this type in other cars that I’ve driven which either took some time to figure out or just frustrated me to no end. Dodge (or more accurately Chrysler) needs to take this system (seeing a they have multiple versions of this system in different vehicles) and make this the standard across every car they make. Then they need to tell the world that this is what they’ve done and let people try it. I truly believe that they will find that people will make the choice towards the brands under the Pentastar. Whomever came up with this system deserves a raise. Seriously.

In the last part of the review, I’ll wrap up a few loose ends and give you my final verdict.

This part of the review will cover how the Doge Dart Limited drives and handles. I mentioned in part two that the car is very quiet to drive. Only when you put your foot down do you hear the engine. Other than that, there’s almost no tire noise and the only time you hear wind noise when you are dealing with a cross wind. Nice!

The handling is very nice. The steering is nicely weighted at all speeds. I can make the car do the things that I need it to do without much fuss such as changing lanes at highway speeds, handling on and off ramps, and doing things like parallel parking. Body roll is well controlled and the suspension is firm in a sporty sort of way. But if you hit a bump too fast or at the wrong angle, you will feel it. If I had some advice for Dodge, they might want to tweak the suspension settings to dial this out. One thing that I will note is that the car has a very European feel to it. You can likely thank the influence of Fiat for that. Your vision is pretty good, although the B pillar is a bit big which makes shoulder checks a slight challenge until you get used to where to look. The mirrors are of a decent size and if you properly adjust them, blind spots are a non-issue.

One thing that did get my attention was the brakes. They grab at a very low threshold. Once you get used to it it’s not a a big deal. But it’s a bit of a shock the first couple of times you use them.

Bottom line: The driving experience in the Dodge Dart is very good and refined for the most part. If you try one, I think you’ll like the experience.

Part five of the review will cover UConnect and the rest if the technology in the car.

The interior of the Dodge Dart Limited is a very upscale one. Almost everything you touch has a soft feel and it looks very nice to the eyes. The seats which are leather are very supportive, but they could use a bit more side bolstering. Let me point out a few things that caught my eye:

This is one of the more unique instrument clusters that I’ve seen. Everything you see is on a thin film transistor display. It’s highly customizable and you can dispaly all sorts of info from fuel efficiency, what music is playing, to your text messages from your phone. It’s very vivid and clear. I’ll circle back to this when I review the technology in the car:

The center console has massive 8.4 inch touch screen. All the functions such as a HVAC, radio, phone, navigation are controlled from this screen. Like the instrument cluster it’s very vivid. This too I will cover when I review the technology in the car. I will say this, it is very intuitive to use. Sort of like using your smartphone in a way.

There are redundant HVAC and audio controls just below the screen. I’ll also note that the shifter looks nice in leather.

If you look carefully at the top of each cup-holder, you’ll see that they have mood lighting.

One unique feature is that the front passenger seat has a hidden storage compartment. Nice touch! If you look at the cup-holders at the bottom of the picture, you’ll see the mood lighting I spoke of earlier.

There is a very deep storage compartment in the center console. Not only does it contain the CD player, it also has a SD card reader, an aux jack for your MP3 player, and a USB port.

In the backseat area, there’s a small cubby hole to stick small items into.

If you flip down the center area of the back seat, you’ll get two more cup-holders.

Behind this panel on the back seat….

…. Is a ski pass thru. I’ll have to test it when my wife and I go cross country skiing this weekend.

The back seat has an added feature of a rear light on the roof. That makes makes for two lights in the car. That’s a nice touch.

The trunk is huge by the way. I’ll see how good it is when my wife and I go shopping later this week.

The glove compartment is of decent size.

And you get cup-holders in the doors to boot.

How about interior space? I was able to set up the driver’s seat to fit my six foot frame and then hop into the back seat easily and have ample headroom and decent legroom. This is important because compact cars typically have the reputation of having back seats that are very bad to sit in for any extended amount of time. Two people can fit back there fine. Three may be a stretch though. Speaking of the driver’s seat, It took me a bit of effort to find a position that I could drive comfortably because of the fact that the sunroof cuts into headroom if you’re six feet tall like me. But thanks to the power adjustable seats, I was able to find something that worked.

Complaints? Only two. I have a size 12 shoe and the area where the dead pedal is isn’t big enough for my foot. There’s also the sunroof that I mentioned earlier. Other than that, the interior is well thought through and everything is well placed.

The next part of the review will cover the driving experience in the Dodge Dart.

You’re looking at the engine under the hood of the Dodge Dart Limited that I’m driving this week. The “TigerShark 2.0” engine puts out 160 horsepower and 148 pound feet of torque from 2 litres of displacement. If those numbers are familiar, it’s likely because you either own or had a look at the current Ford Focus which has the same horsepower and two less pound feet of torque from the same amount of displacement. Keep that in mind as I go along here.

This engine is pretty good at what it does. Getting up to speed doesn’t tax the engine at all. Passing cars at highway speed is no issue and it feels like it has a lot more torque than the 148 pound feet that it is rated at. If you are someone who wants a lot more than this engine offers, Dodge has two more engine choices on tap. They have a 1.4 L 4 cylinder turbo engine which has 160 horsepower and 184 pound feet of torque, and a 2.4 L 4 cylinder engine which has 184 horsepower and 171 pound feet of torque. Though you have to go up to the GT trim level to get the latter.

Having said that, the 2.0 L that I’m driving is mated to a six speed automatic transmission. This combo keeps the engine noise to a minimum. I’ll also note that because you have six gears on tap, cruising on the highway is very quiet. It has a very refined feel to it. The second thing that this combo does is give you great fuel economy. I tested the Dart on the 23 KM route that I test all of the cars I review on. It encompasses city and highway driving which makes it a realistic test. I got an average of 7.4 L/100 KM in heavy traffic. I then tested a second time in better traffic and got 7.1 L/100 KM. Seeing as it’s rated at 8.6 L/100 km city and 5.8 L/100 km highway, and those figures tend to be optimistic, I have to say that I like the efficiency that this engine is capable of. Another thing to note is that I’m testing the Dart on the coldest days of the year thus far with temperatures as low as -11 C during the day. That usually hammers fuel economy. That means that this car can do better in warmer temperatures.

Now, I couldn’t help comparing it to the Ford Focus that I drove a few months ago on a business trip. This is what I said about the transmission in that car at the time:

However that get up and go was surely impacted by a rather crappy transmission. Ford decided to use what’s called a dual clutch transmission for the automatic variant. This setup has two clutches. One for the odd gears and one for the even ones. The idea is that this type of transmission can make lightning quick shifts and save gas at the same time. Well, Ford got the fuel economy part down right as I used way less gas than I normally would on a four day trip in the US. However, the transmission shifts were slow. Compared to some VW products that I’ve driven with dual clutch transmissions, that was very disappointing. In fact some Google searches found that I am not alone in feeling this way as Consumer Reports hit them pretty hard over this.

The six speed automatic transmission I’m driving isn’t a dual clutch one like in the Focus, but it shifts brisky for the most part when called upon and it performs much better than the transmission in the Ford Focus. It can also be shifted manually. But you’re best to leave it in drive because it works so well when left to do its own thing. Now if you want a dual clutch transmission, they’re available with the two upscale engines.

Here’s the bottom line: I like the power train inside the Dodge Dart. I could easily live with the power output and the lower gas bill. I think that most people will like it as well.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at the interior. It has a few unique features that I’ll be highlighting.

It used to be that compact cars were full of underpowered cars that were not good looking and that had few creature comforts. That’s no longer the case. Now a lot of compact cars have to have “premium” features and be stylish and well designed to just have a chance in the marketplace.

Dodge has a new entry in this market called the Dart that is a great example of this. The Dart borrows its name from a very successful model from the 1960’s and 70’s. But that’s all it has in common with that car. The 2013 Dart has more in common with the Alfa Romeo Giulietta (Alfa Romeo like Dodge is owned by FIAT) upon which it is based and comes with a lot of unique and interesting features, especially in the Limited trim level that I have this week. The mission for the Dart is simple: Take sales away from the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, and Ford Focus among others.

Here’s what I’ll be covering in the days to come:

• Interior
• UConnect and other technology in the vehicle.
• Engine and Fuel Economy
• Drive quality
• Wrap Up

Before I get to my first impressions, let me do something different and show some things that caught my attention:

Doesn’t that front end look aggressive?

The tail lights are impressive looking. The back end of this car looks like nothing else on the road.

My initial thoughts?

• It handles well and accelerates well. 
• The sight lines are good.
• The audio system has excellent sound quality.
• Headroom with the sunroof installed is at a bit of a premium for a six foot tall guy like me.
• It’s quiet for the most part with very little road noise, wind noise, or engine noise (unless you really floor it).

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the engine and transmission and let you know what my thoughts are.

Thanks for hanging in for the last part of the review. If you recall part 5, I didn’t fully get to test out the entertainment system because I couldn’t find the remote control or headsets. But thanks to Dodge, I was able to get the minivan for a few hours to test them out.

First of of all, this minivan has three screens, two for the second and third rows and one that doubles as the navigation system. Inside the roof mounted screens is the remote control:

And between the two screens are compartments for the wireless headsets:

You’ll note that they’re powered by two AA batteries:

And there are controls on the other side:

Now, there are two DVD players in this van. You can route the video to the individual screens as seen in this picture:

Now here’s where things get cool. The headsets have a switch where you can choose the audio that you wish to listen to. The sound quality is good, not stunning, but not bad. One thing that we note is that I have reason to believe that these headsets use some sort if infra-red transmission system. I’m basing that on the first picture which has 8 purple dots in it which is typical of an IR system. If you block these in some way, you get either static on the headsets or no audio at all. That isn’t an issue when the minivan is in motion as everyone is likely to be seated, but it is likely to be an issue if people move around the minivan at a rest stop or something.

Here’s the bottom line, this is easy to use, easy to set up, and works quite well.

What are my final thoughts? While I don’t have a use for a 7 seat minivan with two DVD players and two LCD screens among other things, I can see how this is a great vehicle. The features inside this minivan have been well thought through and you can see why Dodge continues to sell a minivan rather than abandon that market like others have. Now I’ll admit that some people wouldn’t be caught dead in a minivan, but I say this. if you need to seat seven people and you need enough toys to make sure your kids never say “are we there yet?” You need to take a very serious look at the Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus and you’re doing yourself a dis-service if you don’t. It’s a versatile and extremely useful vehicle. As I drove it, it was almost $47K. But if that’s too much money for you, Dodge has models that start at just under $20K. If the Crew Plus isn’t enough minivan for you, there’s always the RT trim level. So there’s something for everyone.

Oh, and for the record, I for one would be caught dead in this minivan.

Special thanks to Dodge for giving me extra time in the minivan.

I was going to wrap up this review today, but that’s changed. More on that in a second. First, let me tie up some loose ends.

Let me start with the key to the Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus:

It will remote start the minivan, open both sliding doors, and the rear hatch among other things. But it has something hidden inside:

It has a spare key inside. Very cool!

Next is the fact that we went shopping for food the other day and we leveraged a handy feature. If the third row seats are up, there’s a recessed cargo area that allows you to put your cargo into:

That’s a nice touch.

Two things from the safety front. First was the fact that this minivan came with a backup camera that comes paired with sensors that warn you of objects that are near you. You need to tick that option box if you get this minivan. Another get must option is a blind spot monitoring system. It will put a triangle in the side mirror if something is in your blind spot. But one nice touch is the ability to audibly warn you that something is in your blind spot if you activated the turn signal. Nice.

How about my fuel economy? In mixed city and highway driving that had more than my fair share of rush hour and stop and go traffic, I got 13.1 L/100 KMs. Not a stellar number, but it’s not the minivan’s fault. I had been as low as 11 L/100 KM with driving that was heavily slanted towards highway driving before Toronto traffic caught up to me.

So, why am I not wrapping up the review today? It’s simple. I’m going to have the minivan back for a day on Thursday so I can re-test the Uconnect system now that they found the wireless headsets that I thought were missing. I must give Dodge points for going out of their way to arrange this, so thanks to them for being so gracious. I’ll post the results on Thursday night and close the review off then.

Stay Tuned.

The Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus comes with a feature called Uconnect which allows you to control things like your radio, phone and other entertainment functions from a single place either from the touch screen in the center console, via redundant controls on the steering wheel, or via voice commands. When it comes to the latter, I like the way Uconnect works. When you press the Uconnect button on the left hand side of the steering wheel, it will tell you what options are available relative to what function you’re currently using, or you can simply say “main menu.” The advantage of this sort of design is that you do not have to remember the entire command set or ask the system for help on a constant basis. That makes the Uconnect system easy to use. Points to Dodge for coming up with this. The other thing I will note is that it had no problem recognizing my voice. None. I was really impressed by that.

I was able to quickly pair my BlackBerry Torch to the system via bluetooth and control it via voice. Once paired, it downloaded my address book so that I can dial numbers via voice. If I needed to dial a number that was not in my address book, I can tell it to “Dial 4 1 6 5 5 5 1 2 3 4″ (or any other number) and it would dial the number.  Another note, you can pair up to 7 phones to the system. The sound quality on both ends of the conversation were quite good, which is what you want.

When it came to using the USB ports (there’s two of them, one in the front of the system and one in the upper glove compartment), I got mixed results. When my wife plugged in her iPhone 5, it recognized it instantly and she was able to access her playlists. However, Uconnect only played the MP3 files that were on her iPhone. The AAC encoded music were off limits. So that means if you do what Apple wants you to do and buy your music from the iTunes Store, you won’t be playing it via USB. That’s a bit of a fail. I then tried my BlackBerry via USB as that had over 1100 MP3 files on it. Uconnect took about three minutes to figure out what was on it and started to play the MP3s in alphabetical order and I could only move through them in that order. Even though I had playlists on it, it didn’t see any of those. I could only conclude that it saw my BlackBerry as a glorified USB stick. I had better results using my BlackBerry via bluetooth. I could chose the playlist that I wanted to play from the Blackberry and stream it over bluetooth. Of course, the downside to this was the battery life of my BlackBerry. One other thing to mention, the music would occasionally pause for a split second and then keep playing. Weird. I’m not sure if that was the phone or Uconnect. If bluetooth or USB doesn’t do it for you in terms of music playback, there’s also a 1/8” audio jack as well.

This particular Uconnect system has two DVD players. You can route the video to either the middle LCD display or the back LCD display (which by the way are very clear and have excellent picture quality) so that you can play one DVD on each screen. The audio can apparently be heard independently via wireless headsets as well, but I was not able test that as Dodge didn’t supply me with headsets or the remote control that is apparently included with this vehicle. It also has AV jacks and a 115V outlet so you can plug in an Xbox or PS3. All of this is controlled from the touchscreen and for the most part, it’s easy to set it up to do what you want it to do. In terms of audio, this minivan has 9 speakers with a subwoofer. The audio quality is good for both DVDs and music. It won’t blow you away, but it won’t have you wishing for something better.

When it comes to the navigation system, it’s a mixed bag. It’s perfectly competent at navigating you to your destination. But if I compare how it does it to my Garmin 1350 LMT, it doesn’t do so efficiently. From what I can tell, it doesn’t take the most efficient route to your destination. Instead, it may take you an extra kilometer or two via major streets to get you to where you want to go. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not going to save you gas or time. The other thing I’ll point out is that the screen is way too busy. There’s a lot of virtual buttons around the edge of the navigation screen that I don’t think are required. Dodge could likely make things look better by cleaning that up. One nice touch, all the audio commands that the system hands out are aimed at the driver. By that I mean the balance of the audio changes so it becomes slanted towards the driver seat.

One other thing to note is that the system comes with SirusXM radio, AM and FM radio and a CD player along with a 28GB hard drive to store music and pictures. Everything here works as you would expect it to.

So, what do I think about Uconnect? It seems to work good enough. There are areas that need some work, but they’re nothing that a software update couldn’t cure.

The final part of the review will tidy things up and also give you my final impressions.

UPDATE: Apparently the wireless headsets were in the vehicle. They were located in the passenger side Stow N’ Go area that I didn’t think of checking. Updated review of Uconnect to come.

This part of the Dodge Grand Caravan Crew Plus covers how this van drives and handles. I’ll be honest, I expected this to drive like a… minivan. Let me explain that in more detail:

• Toronto’s rather craptastic streets could not upset this minivan. Not only that, a lot of the bumps were either filtered out completely or minimized.
• The steering was shockingly good. I have to admit that it crushed any pre-conceptions that I came into this review with as I actually got decent amounts of road feel and it has the right amount of assistance relative to the speed of the vehicle. It didn’t feel “video game like.” I’m not going to be carving corners with this minivan, but it does perform better than one would expect.
• Body roll is actually quite well controlled. Although I will admit that if you push it too hard, you’ll get body roll and understeer in a hurry. Good thing it has traction control and stability control to keep you out of trouble.

Engine noise is decently controlled as it’s quiet for the most part unless you put your foot into it. Wind noise is non-existent and the only noise that is present is the noise of the tires. Speaking of the tires, I will note this. This minivan really needs a better set of tires. There is a lack of grip when it’s wet as it is really easy to make the minivan break traction on wet roads. It also means that if you live in an area that gets snow, winter tires are a must.

Your vision in the drivers seat is very good. You sit high so it gives you a commanding view of the road ahead and the drivers seat is very comfortable, though some extra bolstering would be welcome. The rear view is decent, although I would strongly suggest that you flip down the headrests as they will block your vision. Speaking of vision, the mirrors are huge and if you properly adjust them you will have no blind spots.

Clearly this isn’t your average mom mobile minivan. Part 5 of my review will cover the technology in the vehicle. Stay tuned.