2016 Dodge Dart Short Term Review

"Snuze: Needs another Swede" (markg) 09/02/2016 at 09:34 • Filed to: None

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For those not following along at home, the Cruze went in the shop yesterday due to a bad PCV. On this particular engine it’s integral to the cam cover and the whole assembly costs about $80. Lucky for me I have a little bit of warranty left and this was covered. The dealership had the part in stock and was able to fix the car yesterday, unfortunately I didn’t get the call until it was too late for me to make it up there, so I went this morning to pick the car up.

That also meant I got to spend a little bit more time with my 2016 Dodge Dart SXT rental car. It’s hard to give a very thorough review of a car when you only have it for 24 hours, but I’ll highlight a few key things that jumped out at me below:

Looks: Call me crazy, but I think the Dart is a nice looking little car. It somehow straddles the line between aggressive and cute, like a puppy who thinks he’s a full grown dog. It certainly beats the Civic and Corolla in my mind, both of which I think are ugly.

Performance: Dodge always seems to hit the mark here. The Dart can be had with 3 engines, a 2.0L 160HP, a 1.4L Turbo 160HP, and a 2.4L 184HP mill. All cars have the option of either a 6 speed manual or 6 speed automatic. My rental SXT had the 2.4L and 6 speed automatic. The 2.4L felt pretty fast and effortless. My Cruze is tuned to about 180HP and I would say the Dart feels just as fast, though lacks the midrange urgency of the Cruze with it’s turbo at full spool. The 6 speed automatic was good, but not great. Shifts were usually pretty snappy and it picked the right gear most of the time, making it better than other autoboxes I’ve driven recently but it still leaves something to be desired. It has a manual mode which I fooled with a little bit, and it was again better than some implementations I’ve tried but not the best.

Ride and Handling: Again the Dart gets good marks here from me. I didn’t have a chance to really beat hard on it, but it felt responsive and grippy. Steering was particularly notable as feeling quite direct and having just the right amount of heaviness.

Interior: Here’s where the Dart begins unravels. I will say that it’s not absolutely terrible, it’s better than the old Neon, but it’s just not up to snuff. The materials still feel cheap and the dash is a vast expanse of hard plastic. I found the seats to be less than comfortable, though I did warm up to them a little bit after more fiddling, but they still aren’t great. The climate control is simple and easy to use, the traditional 3 knob arrangement, but I found the radio and steering wheel controls for the DIC to be non-intuitive. Again, it’s not completely terrible, I just think Dodge is really a generation behind here, as I’d liken the interior to my Chevy Cobalt.

Another note, Dodge’s build quality seems to strike again. This car seemed to make a lot of random noises and rattles, especially at highway speeds despite it being a 2016 with only 9200 miles.

Verdict: This car offers a performance value in the compact/economy segment if you can live with the offputting interior and questionable build quality.

Ash78, voting early and often > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 09:42

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I think the Dart is one of the only compact sedans that actually looks good as a sedan. I can't speak to the interior, but when we were shopping the Durango a couple years ago, I found the interiors better than anything else at that price point (nearly on par with luxury brands). However, as time goes on, I'm also finding a lot more "discontinuity" from model to model within a single brand.

boxrocket > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 09:51

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I also don’t think the Dart is a bad car. I work as an auto service adviser and see almost every brand under the sun, and I’d personally take a Dart before the cruze. I like the aesthetics, the giant center screen, visibility, ergonomics, and if I got the turbo 1.4, it’s easy to make it sound like a Fiat 500 Abarth.

Speaking of the cruze, if you haven’t picked it up yet, make sure they check the thermostat housing - they’re known to crack and seep, making the thermostat work wrong - and to do a performance check on the camshaft position sensors and solenoid actuators. Depending on the year there may be “special service coverage” (GM speak for “oh, we screwed that up but don’t want to graduate it to a recall”) on these (and the PCV, glad they caught it under warranty!), but good to be certain. I’ve seen two of the cracked housings lately (hooray for boroscopes, hard to see on its own, even from underneath), and one didn’t have any performance issue, but the other was turning the engine cooling fan to max (which is LOUD) as soon as the car was turned on.

Probenja > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 09:56

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The Dart is a great looking car shame that their parents don’t care about him and leave it with crappy build quality and it’s getting killed for 2017.

jvirgs drives a Subaru > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 10:13

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The GT trim is much more inviting than the SXT/Rallye trim. The only rattle I get is from the cheap plastic around the sensors on the windshield.

I really just liked that I could option the car out for 24k and get all I wanted with a manual transmission. Unlike Toyota, Honda or even Mazda.

And once you get used to the radio controls on the back of the steering wheel, thata where I think all radio controls should be. More natural IMO

Snuze: Needs another Swede > boxrocket 09/02/2016 at 10:14

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First off, thanks for all the information!

I think the 1.4 Turbo is what I would get in the Dart as well. It actually has more torque than the 2.4L, and more potential tunability. Mine didn’t have the center screen, so I’m not familiar with that, but the base radio left a lot of be desired, so maybe that’s a nice improvement. I didn’t mention, but you’re right, visibility is quite good.

I already picked up the Cruze this morning but I have a feeling it’s going to go back in soon. Originally, a couple weeks ago, it gave me a CEL with the “Turbo underboost” code so I cleared it thinking it was a fluke. A week later it came back and I accidentally cleared it when I was reading it. Then this past weekend I got the PCV code but not the turbo code. I did a little digging and apparently the 2011/12 Cruzes are known to have faulty wastegate actuators. I told the dealership service department about the turbo code, but they said that since it wasn’t throwing the code when it was there they couldn’t do anything about it. So I’ll just keep driving it until it happens, hopefully in the next 3 months or 5k miles because that’s when my warranty runs out.

I’ll also ask them about the cam sensors and actuators, and the thermostat housing. My car loses a lot of coolant regularly, and it does seem to like to run the fans at high speed quite often. Could the thermostat housing be the cause of that?

Snuze: Needs another Swede > Probenja 09/02/2016 at 10:15

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That’s what I’ve heard, which is a shame. I think it has a lot of potential. If they could just up their interior game a bit I think it would be fantastic.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > jvirgs drives a Subaru 09/02/2016 at 10:24

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I think that was one of the rattles I was hearing. There was another one inside, on the passenger side. I didn’t have the car long enough to really figure it out.

And you’re right, you can option one pretty nicely for not a whole lot of money, and even get the manual. A lot of companies drop it in the high trim level, regard it only as an economy option, which is a shame.

And I liked the radio controls on the back of the steering wheel. What I didn’t like were the controls for the DIC and the radio interface itself. It took me forever to figure out how to pair my phone, and the hands free calling wasn’t very intuitive. I’m sure if I had the car for a long time I could learn how to use everything and be okay with it, it was just a little off-putting that it wasn’t more intuitive.

boxrocket > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 10:28

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Definitely, and the kicker is that it’s so high that when the car is in motion that the leaking coolant gets spread around, rather than pooling on the ground.

Since you’ll be in the area, also take a good sniff under the engine after a drive and see if you get any gas scent. I haven’t seen it on the crude as much, but the Malibus (and equinox/terrain) have faulty high-pressure fuel pumps that leak gas into the oil.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > boxrocket 09/02/2016 at 11:25

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Thank you again, this is all great information!

IanZ - limited-slip indifferential > Snuze: Needs another Swede 09/02/2016 at 20:31

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TL:DR, read the title as Dodge Shart.