Sassy ragtop PT Cruiser a real retro charmer
PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. –The 8,000 Chrysler PT Cruiser owners who attended last fall’s “block party” in Pomona, Calif., got a good look at how creative buyers can be when it comes to customizing this popular vehicle.
One man stuffed a V-10 Viper engine in his red PT Cruiser. Another showed off a Western-themed PT Cruiser, complete with horse murals on the side, a stallion hood ornament and a real horsehair tail on the rear fender.
Chrysler has urged its designers to be as imaginative as these owners when it comes to developing different versions of the PT Cruiser. There’s been the “woodie” PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser Turbo and even a PT Cruiser with flames on the sides. Now, for model year 2005, there’s the much-anticipated PT Cruiser Convertible, which goes on sale later this month.
After a morning-long drive here in a midnight-blue, top-of-the-line GT turbo version with a manual transmission, I was left with the impression that the drop-top PT will be one of the emotional hits of the model year.
The four-passenger PT Cruiser Convertible is a true charmer with none of the saccharine sweetness or hippie connotations of the Volkswagen Beetle convertible or macho posturing of the open-top Ford Mustang.
The new Chrysler’s retro silhouette, complete with sculpted fenders and simulated running boards, and sassy good looks should be especially pleasing to the baby boomers who crowd popular classic car events like the Woodward Dream Cruise.
The only attribute of the PT Cruiser Convertible that gave me significant pause was the $29,340 sticker on my test vehicle.
Chrysler officials say if you order a GT model with all the options, including the striking ‘inferno red’ paint, expect to nudge the price tag into $30,000-plus territory.
Granted, a base PT Cruiser Convertible starts at $19,995, including a $590 destination charge. But keep in mind that’s for the ultra-stripped-down version, with cloth seats and an AM/FM cassette stereo. The base version can’t be ordered with any options, such as side air bags, automatic transmission or CD changer.
The volume leader is expected to be the Touring model, which starts at $22,900, and can be loaded up with options.
Expect to pay an extra $825 for an automatic transmission, $390 for side air bags, $700 for chrome-clad wheels, $595-$825 for antilock brakes and $1,200 for a navigation radio.
If you aren’t obsessing about the price, you should have as good a time in the PT Cruiser Convertible as I did in my test car. Along for the ride was my friend Linda Sharp, a professional driver and owner of a line of women’s apparel called “race chick.”
Our test vehicle had a hot little turbocharged, twin-cam 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine, one of two turbo options on the PT Cruiser Convertible. This particular engine made 220 horsepower and 245 pounds-feet of torque, which translated into plenty of power for passing and having some fun on the highways of the high desert. It was mated to a responsive five-speed manual transmission.
The street-racing theme is carried over into the interior of the GT model, which features a standard tachometer, leather-wrapped steering wheel and silver painted shifter knob.
For those with a practical bent, the GT model returns a decent 20 miles per gallon in city driving and 26 miles per gallon on the highway.
The base engine on the PT Cruiser Convertible is a 2.4-liter four-cylinder that makes 150 horsepower and 165 pounds-feet of torque.
The vehicle handles well on curvy roads, makes U-turns with a snap, is quiet with the top up and lacks any noticeable cowl shake, the bane of many convertibles. The power soft-top stacks onto the rear deck, like the hood of a baby carriage, with the turn of a handle and the push of a button. A “boot,” or coveri g, for the soft-top is standard on the Touring and GT models.
But the “boot” is one feature that I felt needed more work.
When not in use, it stows in the trunk, taking up much of the room you’d need for groceries or golf clubs. To fix it in place over the lowered soft-top turned out to be something of a chore. It took three people to pull, tug, tuck and snap it in place. Linda and I both agreed that if we owned the vehicle, the boot would probably end up in a heap on the floor of the garage, gathering dust.
In addition to the buggy-style top, another dominant design feature of the PT Cruiser Convertible is the massive “sport bar” that spans the center of the passenger compartment.
Chrysler calls it a sport bar because it can’t rightfully call it a roll bar since it’s not designed to protect people in a rollover accident. Like the handle of an old-fashioned tomato basket, the sport bar gives the vehicle’s structure added strength. It also has two tiny lights built into the underside for the convenience of rear-seat passengers.
What I didn’t like was the fact that the front seat belts are fixed to the sport bar. It makes getting into the rear seat a bit difficult, even though Chrysler has added little notches in the seat-belt holders to allow you to slip the front belts off the front seats when accessing the rear. Wouldn’t it have been nicer just to incorporate the seat belts into the front seat?
Chrysler also said that the sport bar was set up to cut down on the wind turbulence in the rear seat when the top’s down. Linda and I took turns riding in the back. The wind tore at our hair and made conversation fairly impossible between the front and rear seat at highway speeds.
We both noticed that the rear visibility is blocked somewhat, too, especially with the boot covering the canopy. But unlike many convertibles, the PT Cruiser Convertible gets an A+ for having a truly useful 50/50 split-folding rear seat, with plenty of legroom and comfort for two adults, much better than you get in the Beetle or Mustang.
Other minor gripes: The driver’s seat height adjuster is hard to reach, you can.t get satellite radio and there’s no air-bag protection for rear-seat passengers.
Chrysler wisely is positioning the PT Cruiser Convertible as a non-gender-specific alternative to the Beetle and Mustang convertibles. In other words, according to Pam Niekamp, senior manager for PT Cruiser Convertible product planning and marketing, it’s “not a chick car or a guy car. It appeals equally to both genders.”
I’m predicting that it will go down as the freshest, most fun convertible of the year.