A little segment of “My Sad Story”

When I bought my brand new 2004 Crossfire I couldn’t have been happier. I thought, and still do, that it’s one of the better looking cars on the road today. And the joy I get each and every time I get behind the wheel is indescribable but each time I get behind the wheel my joy is short lived.

You see almost from the begging I’ve been returning to the dealer to get one thing or another fix, granted it’s the first year of production but the Mercedes R170 chassis the Crossfire is built on has been around sense 1997! Which makes this chassis 11 years old by the time of this writing, which I’m not say is a bad thing, I’m just simply implying that you’d think someone would have proper mechanical know-how by now to be able to fix my problems the 1st, 2nd or even on the 3rd try. Yet sense my initial purchase of the car there has been this rattle noise that at first was intermittent but has now festered into a constant annoyance that at low speeds and the radio turned up quite a bit still very noticeable. There have been a few ideas were thrown around and I’ve had the rear say bar links and bushings replaced twice with no success. Then they thought it was a piece of the parking brake assembly, it wasn’t. Among this and other very disappointing problems such as: Head and Fog Lights having a tremendous amount of fog in them (replaced and are now starting to show fog again), Spoiler Rattling Noise (fixed but they chipped four spots of the paint under the spoiler), Window Makes A Loud Cluck When Put All The Way Down (attempted to fix twice, still not fixed), Window Was Misaligned From The Factory And Made A Horrible Wind Noise (fixed but when bellow 45 degrees the window gets caught on the weather stripping and doesn’t seal all the way), ABS BAS ESP Warning Lights Came One (turned out to be a bad speed sensor), Rear Right Brake Caliper Makes A Clicking Noise When In Reverse (they say the pad does not lay against the caliper properly), Alarm Goes Off At Random And Am Unable To Turn It Off With The Key Fob (replaced: door sensor, alarm control module and key fob sensor… after 4 consecutive months of it being at the dealer they believed they have fixed it), A/C Control Unit Would Go Off And On At Random (replaced and works fine know), and I know there are more but I don’t have my novel of receipts with me at the moment.

Now for the kicker. You would think that after spending half its life at Chrysler dealers in my area they would show a little sympathy and compassion. In stead I get the cold shoulder, and my beloved car is treated with less respect you’d give to a 10 year old hyandi. Each and every time I get it back there is oil and grease covering the steering wheel, driver seat, center consol and headliner. And when asked if they could at the very least clean it up enough to where I can sit in it without getting grease on my cloths I get a sure and then they hand me the keys. One dealer not only returned it to me dirty but when I asked about the 3in scratch on my leather steering wheel I’m told to take it up with Chrysler and to never come back again. I’ve been told and I quote, “Every time you bring your car in hear there’s a problem. I recommend you don’t bring it back here…” and that’s the service manager in a Five Star dealer. And what’s even worse is that I got that same attitude twice from Courtesy Chrysler in Rockville MD (now DarCars) and from Hoover Chrysler in Savannah GA also a Five Star dealer. And every time I call Chryslers 1-800 # I get someone on the phone who always takes the dealers side no matter how incompetent or rude the dealer was.

I now have 15,355 miles at the time of this writing not because I don’t want to drive it but because I can’t. And the more I drive her the more it hits me, they’re jealous. And it’s sucking all the fun out of even having a Crossfire. I could drive around all day with the windows up and get googly eyed stars the whole time but once they go down and people see who’s really driving that rolling beauty they quickly turn to stares of disgust. Unless they’re my age in which case things become very interesting.

I’ll stop now before I end up typing all night… just venting.