Automotive & Things That Move

I was in the market for the cheapest 6 cylinder pickup with air conditioning I could find. The payment on my Jetta was a little steep and we were always borrowing trucks from friends and relatives. It was time for my first American car.

It turned out that the Dodge Dakota SXT fit the bill. For that year, the SXT was only 2WD and only a regular cab. I think the price was about $13k-$14k when all was said and done.

I’ve got a beef with the dealership that I will save for the end. But overall we’ve been satisfied with the truck given what we paid for it. I’m not advocating that this is what a truck should cost, because I don’t. I’ll share a rant on that some other time… But compared to what is on the market, it was the bargain.

The truck has over 70k miles on it now with only one issue so far. At about 20-30k miles, it suffered a crank angle sensor failure while my wife was driving it to work. This left the truck lifeless on the side of the road. It was a 1 day repair under warranty but it even if it didn’t put a dent in our wallet it put a dent in our calendar as I had to take a day from work for towing etc. etc.

Cosmetically, the truck is in decent shape except the bumpers. They must have stamped the bumpers from recycled garbage. They started rusting a long time ago. A symptom I see on most dodge trucks of this era. The body is in fine shape however and the bed has been sprayed with rubber liner so it’s in great shape too. The interior fabric is starting to show it’s age. The spaced in the weave are growing and color isn’t as dark as it once was. But, there are no holes or tears yet.

Torque from the 4 liter six is great. Power, not so great. It will pull over a house from a standstill. But, pulling a 20’ boat on the highway is pedal-to-metal and best you get is about 65mph. Uphill of any sort and your downshifting.

The stock tires are WAY too wide. This thing likes to hydroplane and snow performance is useless. A set of Blizak winter tires makes this problem go away however. I really cant say enough about how the Blizaks changed the snow performance of this truck.

Highway driving on the stock tires can be bouncy, but this also has to do with the heavy load package that came standard. This little truck will haul 2 full yards of mulch without riding the bump stops. Even the guys at the yards are skeptical. They have said 150/1500 trucks often only hold a yard without squatting. We’ve even hauled a full yard of stone dust, (WAY, WAY, WAY over the rated limit. Do NOT try this at home kids) but it was riding the bump stops and the tires were handling all of the road imperfections.

As for the dealer experience I mentioned. I stepped out of a 4 cylinder Jetta into this 6 cylinder dodge. I expected two more torque generations per revolution to produce a 50% smoother engine. To my surprise, this motor shakes the cab at idle. I mean shakes. I raised the issue with the salesman and sales manager. They assured me that if it didn’t drive off (0.5 miles on the odometer) they would take care of it. It was noted on the bill of sales as a condition of sale. Well, 70k miles later and several nasty arguments with the dealership and the truck still shakes and no compensation for the condition of sale. The 5 star people from Chrysler called a few times to ask if I was satisfied with my purchase and I bluntly said “absolutely not” explained the situation factually in plane words every time. They would ask if I wanted the dealership to contact me to which I replied yes. I never heard from the dealership and they stopped calling after three times. 5 star rating is a scam, it means nothing.

Anyway, despite the lousy dealership and that I would personally never buy another new Dodge for that reason, the truck gets a B+. It is what it is. It’s a truck and it performs the tasks I expect of a truck reliably. So for that it gets a high rating.