Looks like everyone and their brother has some kind of beef with these:
- I have read a ton of scary/bad things about this tech as implemented in other car makes in online reviews
- The dealer went to great lengths to educate us
- The owner's manual mentions there are not 1 but 2 different warning conditions the car might tell you about if the transmission starts to overheat due to excessive gear changing (ie heavy stop and go traffic, etc)
- There was even a special "only to be removed by the customer" explanation on the shifter
So far I have been pleased with the results of our car. My wife (the primary driver - it is her daily driver now) has had no issues and when I asked her about it, she said it seems fine.
We have modified our behavior to try to prevent any issues (due to all the scary warnings - don't want to hurt her new toy) which amounts to avoiding creeping around (ie stop or go but don't just idle it around) in heavy traffic or parking lots. With this, we have (so far - only had it 8 days) experienced no negative results. In fact the opposite as the mileage is pretty amazing: 27 mpg around town vs 18 for her previous car (a PT cruiser convertable) and 33 mpg on a trip to/from Cleveland/Toledo with a ton of driving around downtown Cleveland.

 

I believe Chrysler do sell lifetime extended "powertrain" waranty. If either the Engine or Trans blows up, they'll just give u a new one. As long as you stick up with ur maintainence interval, u can drive it the way u want.

 

No issues seen thus far, but we did get some kind of recall notice for I think a transmission slave cylinder? Will head down to one of the local dealerships and have them do whatever the swap-out is probably this weekend.
I usually drive my Dakota instead of the wife's Dart (am a truck kind of guy), but I took it for a spin to the store last night (oops, I "accidentally" didn't leave until most stores were closed so had to drive on the open roads a ways to get to the 24 hour one!) Had a blast "darting about" with it.
We did end-up getting the 7 year 70K warranty on it when we bought it to. It came to like $8/month more on the payments, so I thought what the heck.

 

Yep, I got one of those. I plan on keeping this Dart for quite sometime. They said it even covers the electronics - sold me on that. Those shouldn't cause problems for me as I don't normally drive a manual trans like that anyway - I'll just sit until I can actually move.

The warranty is what pushed the 'buy' button in my mind.

I've replaced a few clutches in my years; which is why I baby them.... usually..

 

Also got a message from Dodge saying they would give us 2 free oil changes for the trouble of having to take it in. That was a nice touch (as these things use the fancy synthetic oil, so it isn't a cheap oil change.)
So far seems to run fine.
Only "problem" we have is that we STILL get stopped by people asking about the car (last week, some random guy in a parking lot asked about it, so we chatted about it for a bit (my 9 year old son even showed off the humongous trunk.) Guy said he like the idea of the Dart name being resurrected as he had fond memories of an old Dart he had years back.

 

Love mine . Works great .

 

I like that it behaves similar to manual trans minus the clutching. I was becoming disappointed with how it would play hang time if I mashed the go pedal. But if I feel like jumping out of the hole I found that holding the brake and gas at the same time then release the brake with the gas pedal maxed it would take off pretty quick.

FYI Chrysler has a "only customer remove" tag hanging on every vehicle offered if it is equipped with new design transmission, not just the dart.