Dodge has debuted images of its updated Avenger mid-size sedan, as Auburn Hills continues its re-boot of its entire product line. The new Avenger boasts the chrome-lined crosshair grille found on its updated Charger cousin, but seems to lack the depth of refresh that its Sebring platform-mate received in its transformation to the Chrysler 200. Will the Avenger update give Dodge a reasonably competitive offering in America’s most competitive segment, or is this just lipstick on a pig? We’ll need a full test drive to say definitively, but for now feel free to pass snap judgment based on the Avenger’s looks alone. After all, you won’t be the only one…
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Tag: Refresh
Americans like big cars. Even when designing a small car for the American market, it’s important that the small car be as big as possible. Sound like an oxymoron? It should. In a country where big is beautiful, the small practical cars go largely unnoticed, and so it is with the Nissan Versa. If you read TTAC regularly, you might know the Versa outsells everything in its segment, but did you know it just got a mid-cycle refresh? Even in the midst of a downsizing and belt-tightening economy, that news hasn’t made much of a splash. To find out if the cheapest four door car in America is worthy of more attention, we took a week to live with a Versa 1.8.
Well, the death of the Sebring name anyway. The Detroit Free Press reveals some of the first details about Chrysler’s all-important refresh of the Sebring/Avenger, a vehicle that CEO Sergio Marchionne recently admitted (in what was surely a Lutzie-award-worthy understatement) is “not the most loved car by car enthusiasts.” The biggest detail: it won’t be named Sebring. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering that the Sebring’s issues are less related to a tepid reaction from the enthusiast market, and have more to do with the fact that even the least car-literate Americans recognize the Sebring name as a symbol for all that is wrong with America’s auto industry.
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