“While in California for business last week, I took a day off and traveled out to The Salton Sea in my Dodge Caliber rental car. Salton Sea started when a flood at the turn of the century produced a substantial inland lake where there was originally barren desert. Soon agriculture thrived, then a tourism and investment boom hit to capitalize on the “desert oasis” image. Lots were being subdivided, roads and utilities were built out, and suddenly the lake tipped into dangerous salinity and pollution levels. It has no intake or outflow – salt and pollutants just concentrate over time. Just as the hotels, marinas, and communities began construction, algae blooms, massive fish kills,and related bird deaths turned the vacation paradise into a fetid, hellish nightmare. There’s no simple way to fix the health of the lake – and also no magic way to make use of the streets, utilities and plots of land already sold under the failed dream. Minor progress can be made on both fronts, but even with significant government intervention, its a rough, unattractive place to be. So here’s the Caliber in a long-abandoned parking lot of the never-built Salton City Marina, surrounded by tumbleweeds, dead palm trees, cracked concrete, and unnaturally blue water. Broken dreams and the smell of death. The Caliber looks right at home.”
Photo courtesy TTAC reader Jeff Conlin
That parking lot goes on to the horizon. What a parking lot.
Imagine it all the way filled with Calibers.
Be careful, some people get verrrry hostile when you tell The Truth About California.
Somebody thinks he’s Dorothea Lange.
I can think of no other place in the world where a place can be built up on such a large scale so fast just to be abandoned in such a short time. It’s incredible. Gotta be the gold rush boomtown mentality.
Looks like the perfect place to store all those unwanted Calibers and other Chryco vehicles once the company goes C7. They’ll be forgotten just as quickly.
You’ve got it all wrong. The Salton Sea failed because of unfair competition from other lakes and the Pacific Ocean. It’s really a wonderful place now, but no one seems to understand and they keep going to Tahoe for some reason. Just 35 billion and it will be a great place again.
If you put them all into the “sea”, will the super salty environment return them to the earth?
I went back and read the Wikipedia entry for the Salton Sea. Interesting. There are definitely a lot of parallels there. Very scary.
Perfect place for that caliber. I experienced one once.
It’s fun to look at the satellite images on Google Maps. All these subdivision roads mapped out with only a few scattered houses. A perfect place for that new Chrysler sales banks of cars to go, and any extra GM cars they might want to hide there.
I see rows and rows of unwanted cars stored out in the desert like those aircraft graveyards.
Route 78 to Salton Sea is wonderful for some fast driving through the desert. I would have taken a faster car :)
Did you get a chance, while in LA, to catch up with Jason Calacanis and his Telsa?
eh_political : Somebody thinks he’s Dorothea Lange.
Or maybe Joan Didion.
More than likely you drove past a small convenience store called Poor Richard’s. My parents used to own that store and I used to live in a mobile home behind it. I don’t know if the fiberglass giant is still out front, or if the SoCo sign is still there.
I didn’t know the Marina was never finished I saw pictures of people doing recreational stuff around there, from the 60s and figured maybe . The playground surrounded by sand made of dead fish bones is very post-apocalyptic.
Apparently there are people there who think the place is still a sleeper town.
I wrote the words, too. One correction : turns out the Salton City Marina was actually built, then abandoned, then bulldozed.
Truth be told, that little Caliber did everything it could to try to win me over. It didn’t… but damn if it didn’t try hard.
The “Fountain of Youth” mobile home and RV park is a hoot there, a total 1950’s time warp. Lots of great hot spring pools (just don’t try skinny dipping).
I like the TTAC photo essay. Nice little piece of history and a gorgeous photo. Keep up the good work guys.
I haven’t driven the Caliber, but have driven the Sebring. The Sebring is not horrid. It is simply a decent, late 90s rental car from a company that needed to hit at least a triple to survive. Even matching the Malibu or Fusion might have been insufficient.
Like Jeff, I want to like the Caliber. It is a decent size and solid looking. I know about the bad interior, but what else is wrong?
Is it simply an overweight object with an uncompetitive powertrain?
Is it good (and reliable) enough to buy one as a $4000 no-to-low mileage Chapter 7 commuter?
Thank god for the lack of property development as the skies above the Salton Sea are home of some of the best aviation training areas in the world. If you venture a little further east you’ll find NAF El Centro, the winter time rehearsal site for the Blue Angels and one of the few areas left in the US where jet guys can boom around unfettered by the FAA weenies….
Nope, it’s a dog longterm. The ones we have had here for company use didn’t hold up.
In short, only if you don’t mind frequent repairs.
http://seo-space.blogspot.com/2008/03/chrysler-dodge-caliber-is-piece-of-junk.html
I propose we put the unwanted Dodge Calibers and Chrysler Sebring’s in the dead Aral Sea, next to the rusting corpses of fishing trawlers with no water to fish in.
…a fetid, hellish nightmare.
I’m confused, are you talking about the Salton Sea or the Caliber?
Grimly, the Caliber examines the wreckage and devastation it has caused to the automotive landscape. The Caliber’s CVT slips a gear, trying to choke down the unrelenting guilt in its throat. The only clear thought it can muster: “This is the point in the killing spree when you really should turn the gun on yourself…”
If you want to use another vapid wasteland as a backdrop, you could always use Detroit’s Cass Corridor.
Robert, you gotta check out a great documentary film narrated by John Waters called Plagues and Pleasures.
Thing is, people will buy a Caliber and other Dodge products when they’re sold new at $5,000.00 a piece.
The Island of Misfit Cars
BlueBrat: The scary thing is you’re right. Both GM and Cryco could move a ton of iron if the great unwashed thought they were getting a deal and the car represented a value play. SUV’s are dead, and minivans on life support but show up in something midsize or smaller and have a good sobstory with a good price and it’ll move.
You wouldn’t believe how many Calibers we have on the roads up here in Toronto. A lot of them were moved from Durangos and Caravans.