SPECIFICATIONS
Model:
Dodge Journey 2.0 CRD RT.
Price:
£21 000, with automatic (range starts at £16 995). On sale in UK in August.
Engine:
1968cc, four cylinders, 16 valves, turbodiesel, 101kW at 4000rpm, 310Nm from 1750-2500rpm
Transmission:
Six-speed auto, front-wheel drive
Performance:
180km/h, 0-100km 11.8sec, seven litres/100km.
CO2:
186g/km.
SUV sales are falling through the floor. Social disapproval was already biting and now the fuel price has delivered a further flurry of punches. Why, then, has Dodge launched the car you see here?
Is it because Dodge is American and clinging on to what it knows best? Is it because Dodge hopes there will still be buyers craving a slice of that country's fast-fading dream? No. It's because the Dodge Journey - we first told you about it in August 2007 - isn't an SUV at all, despite appearances.
It's a practical, rather square-cut, MPV that replaces the smaller of Chrysler's two Voyager as far as the Chrysler/ Dodge sales operation is concerned, now that the Voyager comes only in Grand guise.
The Journey looks like an SUV/4x4 because anything with a Dodge badge is meant to look tough. Many people like the connotations of a mode of life in which the physical vies with the cerebral for supremacy; look at the success of the smaller Nissan Qashqai, which looks like a mild SUV but is really just a tall hatchback.
True, you can buy an all-wheel drive Qashqai, but that's hardly the point. And the Journey comes, for Europe at least, with front-wheel drive only.
This is a hefty, chunky car which flaunts its visual brawn. The wheels are huge, the arches ample, the sides are tall, the windows shallow. This last fact adds an air of visual mystery and menace to the outside and, on the inside, helps create an air of unwieldiness and rearward claustrophobia that makes you think you're driving something large, important and awkward to park.
You'd buy the Journey, then, if you had some kind of personality point to prove. Small boys will probably love its tough looks: it would be King of the Kerb outside the kindergarten. They would also approve of the two folding seats in the boot that make the Journey a cross-generational seven-seater.
And they would get a good view forward from their aft position because each row of seats is set higher than the one in front of it.
Rear recesses
Why else might you buy a Journey? It has an unusually large number of useful storage spaces. For example, you can store 12 drinks cans in two under-floor bins behind the front-row seats; its bins have removable, washable liners; there's a chillable bin in the glove box for two more cans; the front passenger seat can "Flip 'n Stow" to reveal a storage space under the cushion and forming a table-top when folded.
Or, if you fold down the back of each "Tilt 'n Slide" centre-row seat, a pair of cup-holders and a storage recess are revealed for third-row riders.
What else? Bottle holders in all four passenger doors, another under-floor bin behind the third-row seats and four 12-volt power sockets distributed front to rear. The main front cup-holders glow at night so you can quickly locate your Red Bull.
There's a rechargeable torch stored in the boot and options include a ParkView reversing camera whose image is displayed on the MyGIG satnav display.
Signs of care
All these toys, and prices planned to be around 10 per cent less than the opposition (although our comparisons suggest otherwise), do add up to an apparently good-value package. And, unlike too many American cars, including those of the Chrysler Corporation, the Journey has an interior trimmed in materials soft enough and with enough quality not to make every version feel like a base model.
There's padding here, and signs of care taken at the Journey's Mexican assembly plant.
Fine. Does it drive like a truck? It seems to have the dimensions of one at first, although the Journey is actually slightly narrower than a Ford S-Max, a fine car marred only by its excess girth. And the Volkswagen two-litre, 105kW turbodiesel engine that will be the most popular choice (the alternative is a 2.4-litre petrol capable of 128kW) is not a unit known for its refinement thanks to its percusssive pump-jet fuelling system.
The engines fitted to VW's own cars now have the quieter common-rail system but this advantage has yet to reach VW's commercial customers.
Our test car, in top RT trim, came with an optional six-speed, double-clutch auto transmission, a version of the DSG system pioneered by the Volkswagen Group in production cars (and Porsche in racing cars, 25 years ago).
Crisp edge
The emphasis is on auto mode rather than the ability to execute perfectly smooth manual gearshifts with no clutch pedal and there are no shift buttons on the steering wheel. It works well enough, giving a feel more alert than that of a conventional auto, but it does worsen the carbon-dioxide rating, from 171g/km to 186, so you pay rather more vehicle excise tax.
The diesel copes adequately with the Journey's 1685kg mass, delivering its efforts with a crisp edge and, once you've got used to the bulk, the Journey proves more precise in its steering responses than you might expect.
Its height does make the driving experience very 4x4-like, though, both for the good view forward and the way your body moves more than in a lower-slung car as you enter a corner.
The ride over bumps can feel unyielding, too, the result of firm springing designed to reduce lean through a corner.
The Journey, then, is nothing special to drive - a Ford S-Max has about 200 percent more appeal here - but it is useful and much thought has gone into how the Journey will be used by families. For many buyers, that's the important part.