Chrysler 200
Chrysler 200
Chrysler 200
Chrysler 200
Chrysler 200Considering that the Chrysler 200 was just a bunch of sketches a year ago, it turned out pretty well. Then again, in replacing the sad-sack Sebring, the 200 had extraordinarily small shoes to fill.
In late 2009, as Chrysler and Fiat managers conducted emergency triage on the pentastar’s ailing product line, they identified the mid-size Sebring as a good place to put an extra few hundred million dollars. Besides a redesigned interior and the addition of the new corporate 3.6-liter V-6 to the lineup, the 200 gets a new face and tail, suspension improvements to wake up the Sebring’s sleepy dynamics, and extra steps to isolate the cabin from sound and vibration.
How bad was the Sebring? Olivier François, the man sent by Fiat to oversee the Chrysler brand as its president and CEO, says engineers actually worked up a plan to completely rebody the car in 12 months, including changing vital hard points such as the roofline and doors. That’s the auto industry equivalent of putting a man on the moon by the end of next Tuesday. But “vee zimply did not have zee time,” says François in an accent that could have come out of a bottle of Chartreuse.
Tight Schedule, Tighter Tolerances
The 200’s development timeline was so compressed that the lavish press kit for the car contains not a single photo of the interior, presumably because the design wasn’t finalized before the kit had to go to press. This is the kind of cowboy carmaking for which we used to love Chrysler and from which sprung the Dodge Viper, among other hot properties.
Still, stuck with the Sebring’s tall, econocar roofline, the designers and the engineers could do only so much. The Sebring’s chiseled—chiseled by Fred Flintstone, that is—face becomes cleaner, more sweeping, and more organic. A new hood, front fascia, and fenders put the emphasis on LED-accented headlights and the swishy new winged Chrysler logo. In back, new taillights with a “racetrack” of LEDs are bridged by a thick chrome strip, and the bumper valance now extends lower to better hide the dirty bits. Finely spoked alloy wheels finish the upscaling of the old Sebring’s “rent me” appearance.
Engineers lowered the suspension by a half-inch in front and a quarter-inch in the rear and widened the track. Besides lowering the car, Chrysler increased the steering rate and swapped out the control-arm bushings for stiffer units to wake up helm response. Spring rates go up, and both anti-roll bars are thicker to reduce body motions.
As with almost every 2011 Dodge and Chrysler product, the 200 has an all-new interior with a one-piece soft-touch dash accented by a gated shifter, fine chrome filigrees, and low-gloss plastics. Two big dials give speed and tach info under a sculpted hood. Cheapness is now banished—or at least much better disguised. Not only is this interior classier, but it should wear better, says lead interior designer Klaus Busse.
Dashboards made from hard plastic tend to have a cheap, fractured look and large seams. That’s because fitting parts, such as a speedometer bezel or an air-vent frame, to a hard dash requires at least a 1-mm gap so the pieces don’t rub together and squeak. And that’s a tight tolerance to maintain in mass production, where error—and subsequent squeaking—is always possible. With the 200’s soft dashboard skin, says Busse, a hard piece such as that speedo bezel can be squeezed into the skin so that it bites into the soft material, making the tolerance effectively zero and eliminating potential squeak points.
From Terrible to (More Than) Tolerable
The carry-over 173-hp, 2.4-liter four-cylinder mates to a six-speed automatic in the Touring and Limited trims, and it pairs with a four-speed auto in the rental-fleet LX, which starts at $19,995. (A twin-clutch automated manual comes later in 2011.) The 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 is optional in the $21,995 Touring and $24,495 Limited; it’s the standard engine in the S, the top-of-the-line model, for which pricing isn’t yet available.
The old Sebring drove with the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old Buick LeSabre. The 200 darts through corners with far more liveliness, less wallow, and less need for correction. The 2.4-liter engine’s mounting was changed from a four-point system to a three-pointer to reduce the pathways for vibration. This and increased sound deadening help further isolate the cabin, say engineers. When the engine spins toward its 6000-rpm redline, there’s less thrum and accessory whine and more of the surprisingly keen exhaust note.
The six-speed auto is a busy bee in the 2.4, downshifting quickly so the 200 can keep the pace up grades and when merging with freeway traffic. Fortunately, the shifts are quick and smoothed over by electronic finessing. The 283-hp V-6 launches the 200 hard and pulls with much more gusto. We expected more torque steer than was actually demonstrated under vigorous acceleration, and the transmission hangs onto the higher gears more insistently to aid fuel economy.
For what is basically a rushed “fluff and buff” of a subpar product, the 200 shows how cleverly Chrysler has deployed its resources these past 12 months. For a fraction of the cost of a new car, it has transformed the Sebring from a joke into a decent-handling compact mid-size car for customers who prefer luxury trappings to sporty pretensions. If this is what the new Chrysler can do with one year, we can’t wait to see what it can do with four.