The 2010 Dodge Avenger: Vengeful or Just Antagonistic?

As an automotive journalist, you’re often called upon to voice your verdict upon the current car market by everyone from editors to friends. Be it at a backyard barbecue or whilst pounding away at a keyboard, everyone wants to know what you’d recommend. But, we human beings being the critical creatures that we are, everyone wants to know what you don’t recommend even more.

And I’ve typically taken a pretty conservative stance on that particular question, because the fact is that when it comes to the modern car marketplace, there are no true duds. In the days of yore, there were Ford Pintos that exploded, Yugos that never ran, and GM products that had the wheels fall off. No, if you’re shopping for a car in the year 2010, you can’t really go wrong; you can just go right and more right. Or so I thought.

Because here, ladies and gentleman, we have the sole remaining champion of the bad car cause: the Dodge Avenger. Of course, you’d be forgiven for not thinking so, as Dodge has taken much care to ensure that the Avenger’s exterior is the prettiest it could possibly be. From the accentuated coke-bottle kickup over the rear fender to the prominent crosshair grill, it’s every bit the Charger’s diminutive cousin. With classy chrome-clad wheels and dual exhaust, it’s got all the right accoutrements, and the rear treatment is quite good, indeed. The concise trunk is flanked by a pair of shapely, well-styled taillights that pay homage to both the outgoing Avenger and current Charger sedan, and although the trunk-mounted spoiler is a floppy, poorly-made piece, it looks decent enough from a standstill.

Inside, however, the plot begins to take shape. First off, there are the gratuitously wide sills. Should you have the misfortune of driving through any kind of muck, you best be prepared to wear that muck on your calf for the remainder of the day as a reminder to step further out from the vehicle than you’d anticipated. Should you avoid this malady on your first encounter with a brand-new Avenger, you will be able to cleanly settle into the relatively comfortable captain’s chair, where you may very well find yourself quickly be overwhelmed by the fumes that can only come with the installation of far, far too much plastic. From the dashboard to the gas pedal, everything seems to be coated in some form of the synthetic amorphous solid or another, and none of them are all that attractive. Be it shiny, painted, or flat, there’s enough of it to convince Ray Charles that Playskool had finally stepped into the automotive marketplace. Some companies can pull off more than a few different combinations of synthetic material to create a pleasant cabin, but the Avenger’s various textures can’t help but blend into one uninspired homogenous mass. And to make matter worse, the quality of assembly is no better than that of the materials. I’m used to incurring operating costs while driving a press car, but this marked the first time I’d actually lost money to a car when my parking change slid through a panel gap, nay, canyon, and into the bowels of the centre console.

It also marked the first time a press car made me tear up. With a slightly curved shifter bezel coated in gaudy plastichrome and mounted directly beneath the windshield, it accomplishes little more than to reflect every last ray of sunshine directly into the driver’s right eye with eye-watering results. I eventually gave in and began using my wallet to cover the offensive piece of plastic on longer drives. Of course, doing so only opened my tear-free eyes to a few other problems with the Avenger’s road-going manners. For example, while the 3.5 litre V6 is never found to be lacking power, the six-speed automatic seems to suffer from bouts of epilepsy, slamming gears in and out of action completely unprovoked. Don’t bother trying to drink your morning double double at anything less than a complete stop, as even light throttle is rewarded with the most bizarre shift pattern I’ve ever encountered. Once at highway speeds, the Avenger R/T’s sport-tuned suspension manages to hold a straight line almost into perpetuity, much to the dismay of those looking for something with a little pep in its sideways step; getting this thing to round a corner quickly is an exercise in futility. With relatively tall tires at all four corners and a big, heavy V6 hanging off the front end, understeer is the primary conspirator rallying against rapid forward progress, although it finds a friend in the vague and overboosted steering. All this i accompanied by a relatively surprising amount of body roll; a testament to the illusion of a low ride height and width created by the artfully sculpted body.

A relic from the pre-bailout Chrysler era and the kissing cousin to the equally depressing Chrysler Sebring, the Avenger embodies all that was wrong with Chrysler a couple years ago. Riding the wave of success known as the 300C, they genuinely believed they could do no wrong, and promptly set about convincing the world otherwise. And although this Avenger may be a far cry from the Pintos and Yugos of yesteryear, it’s quite simply not relevant in a marketplace filled with such excellent vehicles as Ford’s Fusion and Honda’s Accord. Early reports already indicate that a new Chrysler Sebring is on the horizon, with a Dodge Avenger to follow shortly thereafter, and if the companies’ post-recession products are any indication, one can expect Dodge to come back with a vengeance.