Picked up my Midnight Blue RT last Wednesday and then drove from SE Missouri to eastern Tennessee to visit out daughter and grandaughters. 1100 mile round trip. Very fine ride. Believe it or not, but I had to have the windshield replaced today due to an errant stone being thrown up from an oncoming car during a rain storm.

Some pluses and minuses:

Pluses
1. Very quiet and smooth-too quiet if you want to hear the Hemi, but great for a long trip
2. Comfortable seats-seats could use more side bolstering as you slide around during spirited driving.
3. Easy to find a comfortable driving position with the adjustble pedals, tilt & telescope wheel and seat adjustments-
4. Relatively flat cornering-very stable at 80mph-minimal wind noise-very supple suspension which is not upset by uneven pavement.
5. Excellent power-smooth shifting transmission
6. Clever storage features
7. Cruise control works great-very positive feel and solid engagement

Minuses
1. Gas mileage not as good as similarly powered GTO-the sixth gear on the GTO allows it to run 500 rpm lower at 80mph.
2. Would prefer cruise control on steering wheel-Chrysler already has the perfect steering wheel controls which were on my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee-cruise control on front of wheel and audio controls on the rear-I have yet to find a better set of steering wheel controls in any car.
3. Navigation system has too many areas where turn by turn instruction is not available-I have an IPAQ PDA with GPS and a Garmin 2610 GPS to use in my other cars and on the bike and they both have much more extensive turn by turn coverage-Since all three systems use the same Navtech maps, I would assume Chrysler's issue is the limited memory available when trying to get by with one DVD for the entire country-They should look at some other storage device rather than a DVD-I use 2gig compact flash cards in my portable GPS systems and they will hold the entire USA and some of Europe on the one card-I have already written Chrysler about this issue
4. No autodimming rear view mirror
5. No automatic headlights although I will fix that when the 300C light switch arrives
6. Interior appears to be well screwed together but the quality of the materials is subpar to a number of current cars.

Overall, I am very impressed. I have owned many, many cars with a number of them being high end European models and this car compares very favorably on the driving dynamics side. Could use some work on upgrading the interior plastics, but then you wouldn't be able to have it so reasonably priced.

 

Jerhofer, what do you mean by automatic headlights? Are you saying for them to go on at darkness or to go off automatically? I am planning on getting mine soon. You think the NAV system is not work it? Better off with like a GARMIN portable?

 

Yes, I am talking about having the headlights go on and off automatically depending on the time of day.

There are still lots of pluses to having the nav system built in. No wires dangling all over the place is high on that list. During the turn by turn instructions, the radio automatically mutes so you can easily hear the instructions. The screen is larger than on a portable which makes for easier reading.

You do have more options with the Garmin. You can choose which info for it to display such as your speed, the elevation, etc. It is easier to read the cross streets on the Garmin 2610 when you are zoomed in. On the Dodge built in, even when zoomed all the way in, there is not a lot of detail. Another feature that the Garmin has is that it automatically tells you which street you are about to cross. This is a very handy feature especially in a large city that is new to you.

Plus, you can use the Garmin in any car. Since this was my company car, I decided to try the navigation. Based on what I have seen, if I were spending my own money, I would be much further ahead to get the Garmin or something similar.

 

I believe the auto dimming rear mirror is an option on one of the packages. I have it in my RT AWD. Also the memory caoacity of a DVD is 4.6 Gb which is double the size of your flash card so I don't think memory is the issue. I haven't had any issues with the NAV system yet.

On the interior I just wish they had got the level of trim up to the 300 level.

 

I thought I read somewhere you can program the lights to go off after like 5 - 10 -15 -30 - or 60 seconds witht he computer?

 

I to kind of wished my RT had a more luxurious interior but Dodge's image is more for a sporty look so the luxury image is in the Chrysler 300 series, especially the 300c. My friends all say the interior looks great in the Magnum RT.

 

I agree that after driving a 300c & then drive the rt you do miss more than a couple of items from the 300c. The most important would be memory seats & power streering adjustments.
But has been state on several sites this was not to be on a RT, but it would been nice to have the choice.

Dave