03:59AM - 02.06.'14
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News Source: autoblog.com
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I love road trips. Honestly, one of the best parts about this job is the freedom we're given to experience the open road, whether at new car launches or while bombing around with whatever we're testing on our home turf. But the longer-form road trip is equally special to me, and it's something I'm always eager to do. Air travel stinks – that's not news. So if I can drive, I will. And without our dear TSA to fight with, I can pack all the chainsaws and gallon jugs of chocolate milk that I want. So when it came time to attend the 2014 New York Auto Show this past April, I thought, "Why not drive?" Typically, the route from downtown Detroit to Manhattan is something like 10 hours, but I decided to bake some extra time into the journey and planned for the vast majority of my travels to be off the beaten path. Doing the "avoid expressways" route allows you to see parts of America you've never encountered before, and to meet people with stories and opinions that you've never heard. It's a great way to travel if you have the time. There's something uniquely serene about seeing the country in a great car on a great road. Let's talk about that "great car" line for a moment. Ideally, long stretches of backroads are best done in something fast, comfortable and involving – a Porsche 911 comes to mind. Or, another school of thought says to pick some fun little spitfire like the always-lovely Mazda MX-5 Miata, for top-down, sun-drenched fun. But for this trip, I chose the 2015 Chrysler 200, in fully loaded S guise with all-wheel drive. Now, settle down; I'm not about to compare it to either the Porsche or Mazda. The point I'm making is this: after 1,500 test miles under my butt, I can emphatically state that the new 200 is indeed a great car in its own right. In the interest of moving things along, I'll direct you over to my colleague Jonathon Ramsey's First Drive of the Chrysler 200, where all the nitty gritty specifications and details are listed, as well as his dissection of the car's design. To sum it up neatly, we think the 200 looks killer – especially in white with the dark accents of this S model, including the large, 19-inch Hyper Black aluminum wheels. I really dig the sloping roofline and almost Volkswagen CC-like rear end. That rear three-quarter view is my favorite, with the strong character line that extends over the back wheel wells, dropping off before the bumper. The front fascia is the one part of the design I'm not totally sold on; not because it looks bad – that's hardly the case – but because while the rest of the vehicle has plenty of defined shapes and lines, the schnoz just sort of all flows together to form one big round mass. Sleek, sure, but not as much so as the car's sides or rump. But man, does this thing turn heads on the road. Perhaps it was the fact that the 200 wasn't yet for sale – so it hadn't yet proliferated the roads of middle America like the outgoing model – but this sedan garnered a ton of attention from practically everyone who got a look at it. People honked and offered thumbs-up on the highway, older women and younger dudes ogled the Chrysler while parked at rest areas, and one particularly enthusiastic group of mildly intoxicated teenagers (yep) in rural Pennsylvania astutely summed up the 200's visuals as, "f*cking nice, dude." God Bless America. There's one downfall to that swoopy design, though: interior space is compromised, mostly in the rear. Take the Honda Accord, for example – it offers 103.2 cubic feet of passenger volume compared to the 200's 101.4. That's not a huge differential in and of itself, but take a look at the rear headroom. In the Japanese sedan it measures out to 37.5 inches, while the Chrysler makes do just slightly less, 37.4, yet it feels significantly tighter, more like a Mercedes-Benz CLS (36.1) or Audi A7 (36.6), both cars renowned for their cramped but stylish rear quarters. That's because outward visibility and ingress and egress to the rear seats is tough, with even normal-sized passengers like your five-foot, seven-inch author bumping my head while climbing into the rear compartment. Rear legroom is fine, about an inch less than what's offered in the Honda, but because of that lack of perceived headroom and visibility, the rear seats feel decidedly cramped and un-family-sedan-like. Suffice it to say that the 200 will likely be purchased more by those with small children or no kids at all. There's no shortage of space up front, though, where there's plenty of room for both driver and passenger. The steeply raked windshield and expansive dash sort of reminds of the cab-forward cars that Chrysler was famous for in the 1990s and early 2000s (you could all but sleep on the dashboard of a Dodge Intrepid), and thanks to its a relatively low beltline, the front compartment is spacious and airy. Comfy, too – after about a billion hours of seat time, I never grew tired of the driver's perch – an endlessly adjustable power chair that's nicely bolstered and trimmed with leather. Those front seats are both heated and cooled, too, and the steering wheel offers heat if you check the right option box. There are nooks and crannies everywhere for storage, and the cockpit's layout is easy to navigate while being quite stylish. Materials all feel great to the touch, with no glaringly cheap plastics or odd fit-and-finish issues to speak of, even in this pre-production tester. |
