I haven't filled out the DC survey cards because they don't have spaces for incompetent or hostile.

After taking the car back to the dealer four times for the same problems (sudden darting to the right, doors popping partway open, window hanging open on drip rail, rear end shaking at idle, no heat in footwell and clock gaining one minute per day) the service manager made it clear that he didn't want to deal with these issues any more.

I e-mailed Chrysler's complaint line and they suggested I get a second opinion from another dealer. The first Chrysler dealer I visited refused to work on the car because they didn't have a Crossfire trained technician (they do sell Crossfires), the second dealer failed to have a rental car for two appointments (which I found out after arriving there both times) and cancelled the third when it went out of business. The third dealer didn't even have a service representative there to talk to me, they just asked me to fill out a card requesting the services I wanted. I managed to collar a service person and took him out to the car and showed him the window held open by the drip rail and the door that was about 3/16" open. The next day they called and said that the car was ready. They had not done any work on the window or the door because they could not duplicate the condition. When I picked up the car I found the driver's seat in the full forward position (since it's a manual transmission you have to push the clutch pedal to start it and you can't move the seat with the engine off) which made it very hard to get into. They had also left the small garbage bag I keep for film wrappers etc. draped across the console.

I telephoned the service man at the dealership I bought the car from and told him that I wanted to return the car since it qualified as a lemon as defined by the Ohio lemon law. He told me he'd get back to me in a couple of hours. He didn't.

After my third e-mail to Chrysler which detailed the ways in which the car qualified as a lemon per Ohio law the service man at the dealership I bought the car from asked me to bring it in to have the clock fixed. They replaced the entire instrument cluster only to find out that the new instrument cluster didn't have the correct mileage programmed in so they ripped it out and sent it back to the depot where it was reprogrammed and sent back. This took a week and a half during which they tried to fix some of the other problems including the non-working driver's seat heater.

As I pulled out of the dealer's driveway I felt something hit my leg. When I got home I found a screw that looks like it could have come from the instrument cluster on the floor. The next day as I was getting out of the car I looked down and saw a fresh set of gouges in the bottom of the door frame. The dealership had been kind enough to clean the car inside and out and had wiped off all the paint and metal shavings left when they had dragged the seat across the door frame.

I called the owner of the dealership and told him I wanted to return the car as a lemon and he told me to call the Better Business Bureau.

I was granted an appointment with Chrysler's service representative which I missed because I got the dates confused but we did have a telephone conversation. His name was Tom Scanlon and he was very arrogant and condescending, referring to my problems as "alleged defects" and telling me there was "no way" Chrysler would reimburse me for the car. He also intimated that the gouges were caused by a shopping cart.

Current status of the car; the clock keeps time, the window doesn't hang up on the drip rail anymore but it has wind leaks at the top front corner and bottom rear and rattles in the track when I close the door, the door panel rattles when I close it, there are rattles and squeeks from the instrument cluster, there's still no heat in the footwell, the door still pops open and rattles around when I'm driving, the seat heater doesn't heat, the rear end still shakes at idle and it still darts to the right. New problems include popping out of 3rd gear and an ominously loud ticking from the valve train.

I love my Crossfire and it's perfect for my trips into the hills of West Virginia and Pennsylvania but I bought this car thinking it would last at least ten years and it has become clear to me that Chrysler had no intention of supporting it past the delivery date.