Cars are rated one (forget it) to four ('bout as good as it gets) James Deans

 Specifications

• Style: compact muscle mini
• Engine: 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder
• Transmission: five-speed manual
• Drive train: front-wheel drive
• Horsepower: 215 hp @ 5,400 rpm
• Torque: 245 ft-lbs. @ 3,200 rpm
• EPA mileage: 22 city/30 highway
• Weight: 2,970 lb.
• Base price: $19,480
• Price as tested: $19,995

It's not difficult to discern the inspiration for the Dodge "Don't Call Me a Neon" SRT-4.

Just look at this ad from Dodge's Web site.

This is a street fighter, the most bang for the buck available in America. It's the only under-$20,000 car that can rip 0-to-60 in six seconds or less. Straight from the factory, you can go play with the Nissan Sentra set, the WRX aficionados, the RSX rich kids and the Honda "Catch my Buzz" Civic subculture.

You bet, it's fast and it sometimes made me furious.

But then I wear my cap bill forward, hate all kinds of current music that thuds into my car from your thumping bass, and want my clothes to fit, not hang off me. In other words, this is not my kind of car. I'm not the target demographic, in industry-speak. In fact - total honesty - the SRT-4 was sent the same week I had an Infiniti G35, one of the finest cars anywhere. You can guess which one got the most frequent use.

Still, I drove the SRT-4 enough to learn its pluses -- and minuses.

I learned it spins the front tires on a hard launch, chirps them on the shift to second, and blasts beyond the legal speed limits in under 10 seconds easily. I also learned it will tear your fingernails off if you don't shift from 1st to 2nd very, very carefully (with your right hand fingers placed in front of the shifter, not wrapped around it with your nails exposed on the side). I found it had all the parking finesse of a Ford Excursion. I learned that the path I took from 0-to-60 path resembled a lightning bolt more than a straight line.

I also had a lot - a lot - of fun behind the wheel. Despite the bastard mix of parts thrown together by Chrysler to sell the backward-baseball cap set, the SRT-4 is a hoot to drive.

It has a nice exhaust note, a buzz quite unlike the rumble of powerful V8s, a waspy sound today's youths have learned to love from watching racing on TV. And if it's horsepower you want and your wallet is filled only with tips from Steak 'N' Shake, then this is the least expensive option short of putting aftermarket parts on grandma's hand-me-down Honda Accord.

What this is is an attempt to cash in on what you see all around you on boulevards across America. Young people have turned away from muscle cars of old, and it's not just money that has changed their desires. Something very basic changed, and adults are always slow to figure it out. Young people now truly desire the smaller cars we older folks think of as economy cars.

My nephew was a pioneer in this. Years ago, he bought a turbocharged Mitsubishi Eclipse ("I kind of wanted a 5.0-liter Mustang," he told me then, "but couldn't find one at the right price. This has potential."). Oh but it did. Nephew is a computer systems expert of the first rank, and straight from college grabbed a job that pays more than I've ever earned as a journalist. He began spending huge sums weekly on the Eclipse. Some money went for cosmetics, to create the finest looking red Eclipse in town. But most of it went under the hood.

Serious under the hood!

The car was dyno-tested at more than 400 horsepower at one point. He had achieved that mind-boggling figure by spending about $6,000 on aftermarket items that he installed himself.

"A V8 is easy horsepower," he told me as he worked on the car. "It's more of a challenge to work on a four."

The little car spent weekends shutting down Firebirds, Camaros and Mustangs. Anything. He regularly drag-raced it, driving a hundred miles or more on a Saturday just to show it off.

Then one night vandals struck the warehouse where he had it stored for still more work. They stripped it. Completely. All speed parts, even the wheels, and all his tools.

He seemed nonplused as he told me this. "Well, I couldn't get it to hook up," he said.

"It's front-wheel drive," I screamed. "Of course, you couldn't get it to hook up with 400 horsepower!."

The next time he came to see me, I heard a rumble as he drove up. His girlfriend was beside him in the front of -- a brand new, black Ford Mustang Cobra.

"This rocks," he said.

And then he explained the work he'd already done to stiffen up the suspension and add still more horsepower to the last surviving American muscle car.

Young people. Go figure.

Reading only the specifications for the Dodge SRT-4, one might think Dodge has shortchanged buyers where safety is a concern. The only standard air bags, for instance, are the mandated ones in front. No side bags. No head curtains.

But anti-lock brakes are standard, and they're big units up to the task of hauling down a performance car with a top speed of 150 miles an hour. Stopping distances are very short and modulation of the pedal is easy.

The unwritten safety feature of the SRT-4 is the car's performance and handling. A quick response with precise control may well prevent an accident. This car responds very quickly to any input and its suspension is up to an avoidance task.

A danger, however, might be the desire to really push this fun compact. All cars have limits and this one begs you to find it. It's scary to think of inexperienced young people doing that, but they will.

The rule of thumb still holds: When you ask more than 200 horses to work through the front wheels, you're asking for trouble. Too much power for those pullers to handle.

The SRT-4 certainly suffers torque steer woes. Indeed, don't even think of stomping the accelerator while turning. No telling where you might end up.

The 2.4-liter four-cylinder up front gets its added power thanks to turbocharging -- and a turbo boost gauge is on the dash to the right of the steering wheel. Its compression ratio is a relatively low 8.1 to 1, but the turbo boost requires premium fuel. Perhaps young drivers don't care, but it seems a shame to have a small engine return 30 mpg on the highway yet require the most expensive gasoline.

I never got a chance to performance test the SRT-4, and the computer program used by The Car Place, called CarTest, could not quite get the car to 60 under six seconds. The program recorded 0-to-60 in six flat. That's close enough to mean the other figures are likewise in line with real-world performance.

As was the case with my nephew's overpowered front-driver, this car had trouble hooking up on launch. That was true with the computer program and in the real world. Launching at any higher rpm results in time wasted spinning tires. Launch low and the sweet points in horsepower and torque are missed.

Just for kicks, I matched the new SRT-4 against a few competitors in a computerized drag race. It did well, thank you, but is no match for my nephew's Ford Mustang Cobra (a much more expensive car). It is also no match for the Subaru WRX, which trounces the SRT-4 on launch by virtue of its all-wheel drive. The SRT-4 came in third, matter of fact, edging out an older cousin, the Dodge Spirit R/T of 1991, a Dodge so stricken with torque steer that it seemed possessed.

The SRT-4 is muffler-less and produces a burbling, popping exhaust note. Downshift and listen. The backfires are clearly audible from inside the car.

The Achilles heel of the SRT-4 is the proximity of its massive, racing-style driver's seat and the gear shift lever. That lever is about where it should be, topped by a shiny ball. It slides easily into first but pull back for a speed-shift to second and your hand will smash the edge of the seat. I'm average height and that's what happened to me. Maybe Shaquille wouldn't have this problem, but anyone 5-10 or under with the seat pulled forward for straight-legged clutch depression will. Plus, the dash seems awfully close.

The problem is the Viper-like seats plopped into the SRT-4 where they don't belong. These seats have huge support pads to each side of the base, as well as on each rib-cage side. These are much welcomed when cornering hard, but it's the extra bulge on the base that means seat-and-shifter don't peacefully coexist in this car. Not much can be done about this, except to modify shift habits. No more wrapped-like-a-fist shifting, Bubba. You'll need to learn to place index and middle fingers in front of the shift lever and then flip it backward for a 1st-to-2nd shift. After that, it's no problem to shift to the other gears.

A Fast and Furious Fanatic at work says that's the way he now shifts. "Flip it and throw it," he told me. "Don't pull and push."

Oh.

Young people. Go figure.

Thanks to those massive Viper-inspired seats, the driver is treated to in-place comfort. These babies are great. Not only do they support in spirited driving, but their shape and firm padding make extended travel decent as well.

The front passenger has a similar seat but the rear-seat where two can make do is devoid of anything special. It's a bit cramped back there. The seats are cloth with leather-trim. (Large aside here: These bucket seats simply will not accommodate an obese individual. Parts of them will hang over the wings. Even thin drivers will have difficulty sliding around the wing and under the steering wheel to finally reach a seated position. Maybe we should use the Jeff Gordon method of climbing in...)

The seat belts are the standard type, which somehow seems disappointing. They're every bit as wimpy as those in a base Neon. A little more effort could have put straps in the seats to create a four-point or five-point racing belt setup.

The SRT-4 has a sport suspension, which usually is Detroit-speak for "rough". Not so here. Yes, it's firmer than the average car, and bumps and imperfections can be felt, but the ride was never harsh. It's not up to performance car standards, though, since it's based on the Neon's zero-caster wheel alignment. This is a straight-ahead performer; a WRX, Mazda Protege or Ford Focus SVT will leave this one behind if the terrain turns curvey.

The instrumentation is excellent, executed with easy-to-read black on white. To the right of the main instrument cluster is a turbo boost gauge that you'll mostly ignore. This car is so quick that you better not take your eyes off the road ahead while accelerating hard enough to bring on the boost.

As might be expected with an under-$20,000 compact car, there's a lot of plastic mimicking more expensive material such as carbon fiber. But the steering wheel is leather-wrapped. Remote keyless entry is also standard. Still, it's a Neon inside no matter what Dodge says and has a Dollar Store decor. It's also noisy and nothing about its construction promises rattle-free experiences a year from now.

When targeting young people, the audio system (don't call it a radio) is of special concern. Dodge tries to meet expectations with a unit working through six speakers. A CD is standard with the AM/FM setup. Young people will toss this whole cheapo unit, however, and pop in a monster aftermarket system.

There are nice touches in this interior, such as mirrors included in both sunvisors. Air conditioning is standard.

But there is also that wing in the rear view mirror, a presence that never failed to startle me when glimpsed as I was backing up, a constant blockage of good rear visibility while cruising. Wings like this are such a big deal where I live that kids steal 'em as fast as they can be attached.

Young people. Go figure.

Chrysler is late to the party. It's been awhile since young auto enthusiasts -- read: future car buyers with real cash to spend -- turned away from Detroit products with big engines and bigger wheelbases. Once, the landscape was populated with Roadrunners and Chargers, Cudas and Challengers. No more. They're all extinct. Where did the owners of these Boss Beasts go?

Look around.

Hollywood did.

You know something has come of age when Hollywood creates a cult movie about it. So it was that a Hollywood exec in his BMW 740i looked around during LA grid lock one day awhile back and noted young people behind the wheels of lowered, buzzing Hondas and Nissans and Mitsubishis. The cars were fast, too. The executive had heard that street racing had returned after a three-decade hiatus. Wow, the exec said to himself. Here we have the makings of a hit movie: speed, illegality, danger. Lots of crashes!

Thus was born the germ of an idea that grew up to become "Fast and Furious."

They ate it up in Arkansas and Arizona, North Dakota and North Carolina, Minnesota and Maryland. The LA trend spread across the nation.

Chrysler, of course, can't make a new model car even at the glacial speed with which Hollywood produces movies. So it's been two years since Chrysler showed a concept Neon designed to woo the grunge group. (They introduced it against graffiti-painted walls around which they positioned a slovenly group of young, cool dudes and dudettes.)

Two years later, and minus the Neon moniker with its "cute" implications, the car has finally made it to production as a 2003 model.

It is the most bang for the buck if 0-to-60 is your bang criteria.

Is that enough? Will there be boulevards full of nasty Neons before long? Will Chrysler's newbie blow VW and Subaru and Honda all the way back to their home countries? Will Hollywood produce "Exceedingly Fast and Increasingly Furious: The Prequel", where bullies on Big Wheels terrorize a sidewalk full of kindergarten tykes on trikes while Hispanic parents leap from SRT-4s to duke it out on the playground?

Stay tuned. Just don't hold your breath.

'nuff said.

Home, James