Chrysler Crossfire 3.2 V6 2004 Review

Here is a rare thing in my car buying history. A car I didn't buy because of either cost or speed. A car I bought...just to get around.

In 2004 Chrysler released their contribution to the 2 door coupe market. Another way of putting it is that in 2004 Chrysler rebadged some Mercedes R170 mechanicals with a Karmaan designed body. The end result...unsurprisingly you got a 1996 SLK320 with a 2004 stereo system in it (and some fancy bodywork).

However, despite this early establishment of a basic truth, all is not bad in the world of the Crossfire.

General

The crossfire came in one of four forms. You could have the fixed roof or the convertible (roadster), and you could have the standard 3.2litre or the supercharged 3.2litre AMG unit with either. The faster one was badged "SRT-6" consistent with the Dodge performance model naming system.  I tried and tried, but for the life of me I couldn't track down a single SRT-6 model for sale at a reasonable price. Now, I'll say this right here and now. The fact that I couldn't and didn't get an SRT-6 is to my eternal shame. As a car man, getting anything other than the highest performance package available on any given car is nothing but an abject failure. I admit this. I suffer for this. But let's move on...

Suffice to say, this review will cover the basic 3.2litre model. In every detail, except the engine and the transmission, the cars are identical. Every detail except the rear spoiler. The slower car comes with an automatically operated variable geometry spoiler. It pops up at 70 mph and goes down at 40mph. There is a manual override option and you can fix it in a number of positions. This is very useful when the police ask you how fast you were going! The SRT comes with a fixed spoiler.

Power

First off, this car uses a Mercedes Benz M112 engine, and this is a very good thing. Rated power output is 215 bhp for a 3.2 litre V6 unit, but that doesn't tell the whole story. This engine was made during the peak of Mercedes' over-engineering period. It's a mass produced unit designed for reliability and flexibility. In this way it may be superior to the AMG unit in several real-world yardsticks, but I won't speculate on that here.

The engine uses a few fairly sophisticated methods to increase it's standing. Firstly its a 90° V6, which usually means it's a rattling vibrating mess that only revs up to 5000rpm before it shakes itself to pieces. Not so in this case. The engine has rotating balancing shafts, and is remarkably smooth. The nice big gap between the engine banks makes a neat slot for a variable geometry intake manifold as well. Below a certain rpm the air takes one path to the cylinders, over a certain rpm it takes a slightly longer path. The result of this is that the car can take advantage of Helmholtz Resonance in the intake and produce a broad torque curve. 

Then there  is the ignition system. The car comes fitted/specified with 100,000 mile spark plugs. (Free advice; no matter what the manufacturer says, never wait more than 50,000 miles to change your plugs. Even long life plugs will become brittle and baked in this time, even if the electrode remains solid. Shorter life plugs need to be changed much sooner of course.)

Each cylinder has It's own coil pack which sits on top of the cylinder. Each coil pack drives two spark plugs in that cylinder, and each plug takes it in turns to spark first to ensure even wear on the plugs. The plugs are fired out of phase to prevent cylinder pressure rising to quickly. The spark is adjusted by the car's computer to take into account the octane rating of the fuel in the tank, exhaust gases and ambient conditions. You take all of this into account and you have a car that will produce a spark on time and every time in almost any condition. When I changed the plugs on my car I found that one had cracked in half (see above!) and many were gapped 0.5mm above desired. Until I actually took them out, I had no indication. The car was running perfectly smooth despite all this!

I could actually go on and write a long (and boring) list of the countless clever little tricks employed on this engine that makes if work far better than it ever should, but I will summarise. The car is fast and powerful. 0.60 takes 6.5 seconds. That may not seem super fast, but at 60mph this motor is just getting started. It pulls like a train at any speed, and jumps to 25mph off the line instantly. In every way that matters in the real world; this car is quick.

Handling 

Handling was the biggest surprise for me. Reading the opinions of many of the motoring journalists I was under the impression that this car handles badly. My personal experience has been that the car is quite sure footed, though you do indeed feel completely detached from the road. The wheels are big and the car sits low to the ground. You never really know where you stand with regards to grip. The traction control system does it's job well and actually does turn off when you tell it to, unlike some cars. When it's on it keeps the car in check, when it's off...its pure guesswork You can induce the rear end to slide very easily. 

You can do doughnuts without any challenge. You can drive fast and drive slow, take corners however you want. At no point during any of that will you feel like you're driving a car. There is a steering wheel, a shifter and some pedals. I had the exact same setup when I bought Gran Tourismo 2 on my Playstation, and it felt pretty much the same. Utterly boring to drive around twisty roads. The only joy in this car is the fairly impressive acceleration across the board. That, and how well it actually does handle, despite providing no feedback. These are the things you have to keep reminding yourself about when you think about selling it a loss to your little sister.

Looks 

Hmmm. Well this has to be the car's grab for immortality. Despite being a licenced version of an existing car, the Crossfire did submit one certain unique something to the annals of motoring history. The deco inspired lines and the unmistakable silhouette. 

I have to say, I wasn't too keen on the looks when I bought it. Not to say I didn't like them. I thought it looked cool. But in a fashionable sort of way, rather than stylish. It seemed to have the sort of appeal that was transitory. Like the pretty girl who you can just tell won't age well. I've actually had it for over a year now and I'm starting to change my mind. The more I look at this car the more I like it. The proportions are just "right", just like they were right on all the old hotrods of the 30's and 40's that the Crossfire bears homage to. Something about the look of the car just sits well with me, and time has only endeared it to me more.

Inside though it is a slightly different story. The interior is plasticky and cheap looking, the seat are made of "not-quite-leather", the switchgear is identical to any repmobile on the road in the 90s. It doesn't really make sense. They went to the lengths of creating an authentically original deco inspired exterior, but lifted the interior off a 92 Ford Escort and painted it silver. Why?! While perfectly functional, it never really makes you feel at home. Certainly this is a car that is best viewed from the outside. Strangely though it's never failed to draw comments from my passengers. Comments that were universally positive. I guess the designers had their finger on the pulse! In spite of those endorsements, I will maintain that the interior of this car is something you will look forward to forgetting. The exterior on the other hand is something that will probably always be remembered.

Reliability 

This is something of a mixed bag thanks to the new (and absolutely ridiculous) legal requirements here in the UK. 

Mechanically speaking this car appears bulletproof. Every single component I have removed and inspected, every drive I have taken has assured me that this car will not let me down. So as a form of transport, I would describe it's reliability as superb. No. Flawless. Oh, except that you can only have one passenger, and if they want to bring anything more than a chocolate bar, the luggage will have to be shipped to the destination by a freight forwarder....but that's a different matter.

The problem comes with the electrics. As hinted at above, there is a lot of thinking going on on the part of the car no matter what it's doing. A full suite of sensors is constantly feeding information back to the ECU so it can decide how best to operate the motor. The reliability of these sensors and a few other electrical bits and pieces has caused me some issues indeed. 

Here in the UK now, a warning light illuminated on the dashboard will result in a failed annual inspection test (MOT test we call them). What this essentially means is that the car will say something is wrong and the garage will fail the car and tell you to replace the component that the car claims is malfunctioning. THE TROUBLE is that often it is the car's own diagnostic sensor that is faulty, or worse yet, a tiny piece of a much more expensive component that is going wrong. Of course, the car will simply advise you replace the whole assembly, leaving you with a huge bill and a soon to reappear problem.

I have managed to get around these issues by doing a lot of the work myself. Diagnosing faults and correcting them at their root cause. For someone willing to go down this path, the car will present only occasionally inconveniences. However, if you are the kind of person that expects a garage to look after your car for you, the Crossfire will be a most expensive proposition indeed. In fact I would suggest you stay clear of it! Stay clear of all modern cars for the time being in fact, but that's another discussion!

One other thing. No spare tire. The wheels actually don't even fit inside the car, so even if you had a spare, you would have to abandon your alloys at the roadside. No...instead of a spare you get...the puncture repair kit. Whatever fool invented this concept clearly never actually drove a car in their life. It says in the owners manual that research indicates that flat tyres occur, on average, only every 50,000 miles and so they have decided not to provide a spare. I'm not sure where this statistic comes from, but I can say for certain that even if it were true (which I refuse to accept it is)...the dammed repair kit is the most worthless piece of equipment ever made. I won't go into too much depth, as this is supposed to be a car review...but I have to say this. 

The kit advises the following:

Flat Tyre? Find hole in tyre, move hole to bottom of wheel, plug in bottle and allow to empty into tyre, then drive for 8 miles to allow formula to set. C'est voila! Your puncture is now repaired. 

What can I say! Except that I hope one day the guys at Chrysler break down on the hard shoulder of a motorway on a cold rainy night....and learn what the rest of us already know.

Overall 

On net, I have to say that this car has been good to me. It always got me around and it never made any fuss. The only fuss was from the EU mandated changes to the MOT test. The car looks nice, it goes well, and its very easy to live with. Why am I not happy?

I guess, if you don't like cars, then all you could ever hope for is a car that shuts up and does what it's told. But like anything else in the world, when you love something, you want the relationship to go two ways. I like a car that makes life interesting occasionally. I like a car that tells you it's on the limit, or if the rear end is about to go. I love it when you can feel the road surface your driving on. I like listening to what the car has to say. Sadly, in the conversation department, this one is lacking bigtime. 

It seems wrong to criticise what is nothing short of a miracle of engineering. Just 30 years ago, there wasn't a car in the world that ran this well, hardly an affordable car that went this fast, and certainly few that looked so striking. Here we have progress. The engineers listened, and gave the people what they wanted.

Since when have people known what they wanted.