The Chrysler PT Cruiser GT Was the Best Version of the Worst Car

this is a Chrysler PT Cruiser and it is generally agreed to be one of the worst cars of the modern era it is ugly with unfortunate retro styling that didn't age very well it's slow the interior is awful it's unreliable and badly built but for a few years Chrysler offered the PT Cruiser with a manual transmission in the turbocharged engine from the Dodge Neon SRT 4 and that's this and today I'm going to review it I've borrowed this PT Cruiser from a viewer here in San Diego and I'm going to start by going over the PT Cruiser basics the PT first came out back in 2001 right at the start of the retro design craze and back then everybody wanted one they were selling for sticker price at Chrysler dealerships they were the hottest new thing Motor Trend called the PT Cruiser its Car of the Year but then the PT Cruiser started to become the symbolic car that was driven by Grandma something that was just hilariously uncool and then the retro car design trend died down and yet Chrysler kept on selling the PT Cruiser all the way through 2010 and by then nobody was interested in and except for the rental car companies it had gone from exciting to embarrassing and just about a decade and now pretty much everybody calls it the PT loser but while everyone hates the PT Cruiser there was one cool version from 2003 to 2007 Chrysler sold the PT Cruiser with the turbocharged four-cylinder engine from the Dodge Neon SRT 4 and they called it the PT Cruiser GT if you got one of those you've still got an ugly PT Cruiser yes but you also got two hundred and thirty horsepower a manual transmission and a lot of tuning potential these GT cruisers as they're called are incredibly rare as I film this video there are 726 PT Cruisers for sale on auto trader but only 10 are the GT model with the manual transmission and today I'm going to show you around the so-called GT Cruiser the best version of the worst car first I'm gonna take you on a tour of the PT GT and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a dug score all right I'm gonna start the quirks and features of the PT Cruiser with getting inside and that means we have to talk about the key you can see this car has both a key and a remote and there different-colored the remote is black the key is this beige brown you were thought that Chrysler could match the two but they simply did it if you wanted that level of style you shouldn't have been buying a PT Cruiser and speaking of style issues with this car I've always found it a little unusual that they have this flared rocker panel at the bottom of the door and it's supposed to be a nice little style element except it has to take a little break in the back door so that the back door can open on the front door so you have this rocker panel and then there's a gap in it whenever the doors are closed which of course looks very stupid but that's what they did anyway climbing inside the PT Cruiser you push this little button in the door handle another great decision since that button will never possibly freeze up during a cold winter you push that little button in the door handle and then you climb in and next up when you climb inside the PT Cruiser the first thing that you notice is that the interior quality is not particularly good there's cheap plastic on basically every surface you can see feel touch look at everything has cheap crappy the hard plastic in some varying degree some of its texture and some of its gray some of its black but it's all really cheap but this was a pretty cheap car so you expect some pretty cheap materials what you don't expect are the other glaring examples of the PT Cruisers poor quality for example the center control stack and the center console meet and a lot of cars it's one big flowing piece in this car it's two pieces and you can put your entire hand through the gap between them that is quite a rather large panel gap there would be better if it wasn't there but in fact it is and next up another good example of the PT Cruisers rather cost-effective development I love how easily this thing can be swapped from left-hand Drive to right-hand drive a lot of cars their interior is very asymmetrical things are tilted towards the driver the passenger has their own zone not this thing over on the left side the driver side here in the United States you have the steering wheel and then the gauge cluster is in this little panel but if you look over on the passenger side you have the exact same size and shape panel just mirrored Chrysler wanted to make it as easy and as cheap as possible to build a left hand drive version and a right hand drive version without really doing all that much extra work and another good example of that comes with the window switches nearly all modern cars have their window switches on the door panels so each passenger can have their own individual window switches and so they're easily within reach not the PT Cruiser instead the front window switches in this car at the top of the center control stack next to the climate vents and that meant Chrysler didn't have to make individual window switches for the driver's door panel and the passenger door panel and thus individual door panels for left-hand Drive and right-hand drive they could just put all the switches in the center regardless of where the steering wheel is positioned and sheep out and so Chrysler being Chrysler especially 15 years ago they went the cheap route and speaking of Chrysler being Chrysler and the era of the PT Cruiser let's talk about the climate control vents if you want to move around the airflow in the climate control vents you go to this little dial in the middle and then you move it except if you look into the vents you can see it just moves this little plastic piece around and doesn't appear to actually direct the airflow I think the air just blows out from inside the dashboard and then it would hit that little plastic panel that you're moving and it wouldn't really have much effect on where the air is going this is the cheapest crappiest way to do this I have ever seen of course it's how Chrysler did it I have the same complaint for the little dials that open and close the air vents instead of hiding them out of sight like virtually every other car so you can barely tell that they're there you have these little circular warts on each climate vent and you can twist it and that will open and close the climate vents there had to have been a better way to do this but I strongly suspect this was the cheapest way to do it so that's how it was done with that said not everything was done as cheaply as possible for example take a look at the door panel and specifically the storage area at the base of the door panel you can see the piece surrounding that storage area is not just an ugly boring piece of plastic instead it is a piece of plastic with holes in it that is the kind of innovation you can expect from the Chrysler PT Cruiser door panel storage holes and another piece of Chrysler PT Cruiser innovation we go back to the center control stack near the bottom you have two separate switches one is to turn off traction control the other is for the rear wiper but if you look closely you will also see a third switch just for the defroster that one is on a pedestal why is it not even with the other two switches I don't know maybe the defroster is just that much more important to Chrysler and next moving up on the center control stack we get to the radio head unit now Chrysler had been using this radio head unit for years by the time the PT Cruiser came out so it was already pretty old by then but it worked well so why change it good evidence of that is in the radio presets you had five actually you had five AM presets and 5 FM presets but that was it there was no like FM one FM 2 FM 3 all it could remember was ten total presets so I hope there were only 5 radio stations you liked because that's all you were getting and next up another interesting feature of the PT Cruiser you're driving along you want to shift into reverse that's a pretty common occurrence but in this car when you shift into reverse it beeps at you several times it doesn't beep on the outside like a truck instead it beeps inside just to remind you that you're in Reverse thanks I appreciate that Ian next up looking around this interior you may have noticed the boost gauge mounted on top of the gauge cluster that is an aftermarket accessory Chrysler did not put that on there this car has had one or two very small modifications that don't really affect the driving experience I only bring up the boost gauge to mention that it is not a factory part now I also bring up the boost gauge to point out another interesting item with the PT GT which is the fact that it doesn't really remind you anywhere that this is the fast version this car has like 70 more horsepower than the base level PT Cruiser and I'm sure it cost a lot more when it was new but it doesn't say GT anywhere in a new car there'd be GT embroidered on the seats the steering wheel the floor mats but not here they didn't even give you a boost gauge the prior owner had to put one in the only reminder you have in this entire car that you have something different from a standard PT Cruiser is in the gauge cluster it says 2.4 l turbo that's it that's all otherwise you sit in here and you just think you got a regular PT Cruiser which is not a good thought to have and next up we move on to the back seat of the PT Cruiser where again this car is a wash in Chrysler innovations and I want to revisit the window switches once again Chrysler didn't want to put them on the door panels because that would be too costly so instead they stuck the window switches on the floor between the seats in the middle which is just about the worst placement for them I could possibly imagine because if you have a middle passenger they're gonna kick the window switches and the windows are gonna go down but also you have to reach all the way to the floor every time you want to roll down the windows and if you stick anything on the floorboard it rolls around it will roll down your windows and it's just really stupid but that's what they've done here and speaking of that area around the windows switches and stupid things honorable mention goes to the cup holder this is clearly an afterthought cup holder this was supposed to be a storage area and then late in the process someone must have said wait a minute we should have a cup holder for the rear seat and so they like molded some plastic in the shape of a cup but it doesn't take up this whole storage area it looks really stupid but that's what they've done and next up another nice touch in the back of the PT Cruiser as you know the mark of a high-quality automobile is whether you can look through a hole in the rear seats and into the cargo area and in this vehicle indeed you can there's a rather large hole in the rear seats look through it and there's the cargo area that's how you know that quality was important to the company that created your vehicle another way you can tell that quality is important is if your vehicle has a random unexplained hook on the inside of the b-pillar and indeed the PT Cruiser does there it is what does it do I don't know there's even one on the passenger side another hook there just in case you've always wanted a hook in your interior you didn't have one well the PT Cruiser Dunn's and speaking of hooks I should point out that the door latch inside the door jamb back here has the letters in USA stamped right into it which makes you feel patriotic every single time you open the back door except for the fact that the PT Cruiser was built in Mexico you're supposed to forget about that just look at your door latch and then you can wave that American flag and next up another notable feature back here is the seat backs if you look at the back of the front seats you can see they are different on the driver's side you have a leather in a little storage pocket on the passenger side you have this plastic seat back so what's that about well the theory was that you were supposed to be able to fold down the passenger seat completely flat and then use that plastic seat back as a desk while you were parked of course this is the kind of brilliant innovation you can get from Chrysler a fold down death for the passenger seat your car probably doesn't have that nor have you probably wanted it and next up we move on to the outside of the PT Cruiser we're getting the GT model did make some important stylistic upgrades to the regular PT Cruiser the most important was the bumper the regular PT Cruiser had a black plastic bumper that was unpainted now I don't mind the look of black plastic bumpers sometimes but in this car it strangely protrudes from the rear end as if the designers forgot they had to include a bumper and just tacked it on later it's a very strange look now in the GT model the bumper was painted body color which helped kind of neutralize that weird protruding rear bumper look so it did actually help another big style upgrade of the GT Cruiser came on the roof you can see this car has a rear wing and quite a large one that's because this car generated so much downforce that the rear end would lift above 240 miles an hour track tested at Lomov and so they had to stick that rear wing on there to solve that problem and something else Chrysler stuck on the outside of this PT Cruiser in the back is this window washer often this is concealed inside the wiper mechanism or somewhere else but not in this car it's just kind of tacked on there off-center on the rear window with that said it's not all bad back here I actually and legitimately do like one feature which is the Chrysler logo that goes across the back at the time Chrysler's logo was this like set of wings and I like how they integrated the rear tailgate handle into the Chrysler logo you pull it the tailgate opens right in the middle it's kind of a cool little touch but anyway you open up to the tailgate and what you see is a cargo area pretty standard not anything unusual or especially large but a nice practical cargo area now there was one actual piece of innovation back here one surprisingly useful item in the cargo area of the PT Cruiser and was the cargo cover which was surprisingly flexible in what it could do there is a diagram on the top of the cover that shows its many positions one is top which is where it's currently placed next up there was mid you could stick the cargo cover in the middle of the cargo area and then it was a little bit lower which could help accommodate certain cargo that you might stick back here next you could put it on the floor which isn't really that helpful because you already have a floor next you could put it vertical up against the seats once again not really all that helpful because you had the seats there but next is my favorite you could use it as a table you can see the cargo cover pulls out to this position and then you drop this little latch under the cover and then it can be used as a table out the back of your PT Cruiser which could actually be helpful if you wanted to picnic or tailgate with your PT that is a pretty good feature and next up we move on to the front of the PT Cruiser nothing can hide the front end look of this car which always kind of looked like a weird smiling face with the eyes on the side and then this little chin underneath it was never a really good look and since we're talking about the look of this car it's worth mentioning that I think one of the biggest reasons people hate these is the styling there were a lot of retro cars in the late 90s early 2000s the Volkswagen New Beetle the Chevy HHR the o-5 Mustang the Thunderbird but none are more hated than the PT Cruiser part of it was the poor quality the fact that they all became really cheap but part of it was just that it didn't look good and it really didn't age well this car looks very much older than it actually is and not just because it has a retro design and finally since I'm up in the front of this car a couple of other interesting quirks and features up here one is the metal antenna stuck to the fender right there most cars by 2004 had ditched metal antennas they were hiding the antennas like modern cars do but not the PT Cruiser it had it sticking right up so you could have good reception for your Five Precepts and so those are the quirks and features of the Chrysler PT Cruiser GT now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives alright driving the PT GT I've had quite a bit of experience with PT Cruisers I worked as a summer job and enterprise rent-a-car back when these were going way out of style Chrysler had built way too many of them and like all of our cars where PT Cruisers so I've driven a ton of them and then I also crushed one with a Hummer so I kind of am into the PT Cruiser scene also might be able to hear the last modification this car has which is a like a blow-off valve in here when you let off the throttle so what do I think of the PT in general well part of the hate for this car I think comes and it's styling is a big one poor quality is another one but also it's terrible driving experience anybody who's been in one knows this car isn't a disaster to drive the stuff you hear and feel when you're driving the car is just terrible it's too loud the engine drones you can hear it all in the cab and wind noise road noise everything it was just so poorly made and anybody's ever driven one pretty much uniformly hates it although there's a few people still left who loved theirs so the big question of course is does the powertrain actually affect the driving experience and make this a decent place to be and the answer is surprisingly it makes it feel quick I was shocked by this I mean I know it's got a lot of power SRT for motor I've been in those I know how could they are but I was expected to still suck and it does it's not a good car but it's better and and more importantly it's faster and this engine feels like an old-school turbo engine which I love which means that you floor it and it's like not much not much not much and then it's this car actually feels pretty quick it's actually fun and fast and exciting to drive fast in a straight line in a straight line I am very very careful to mention that because it is still horrible to drive around corners the steering is not good it never was good they did not make any real upgrades to this car to make it good the steering is very bad you're also in a tall car with a tall profile and unlike modern you know high-performance SUVs where that's okay this car they haven't really been able to mitigate that very well and it feels like a tall car with a tall profile what do you do throw it around corners you get body roll you get steering that's not very precise not alike great I don't want to harp on the steering and handling though it's not good but the acceleration is way better so there's pros and there's cons but don't go buying this thinking you're getting some like secret excellent PT Cruiser you still have the bad interior like I mentioned not much distinction from a regular model and you still have not so great handling and not so great steering but what you also have and importantly is to have a pretty good accelerating car which is fun and so that's the Chrysler PT Cruiser GT this is still not a very good car but it's a better car than the regular PT Cruiser and I think the idea is hilarious a fast exciting powerful engine inside the worst car in modern automotive history according to enthusiasts this car is a bit of an enigma a conundrum and for that I'm into it and now it's time to give the GT Cruiser a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the PT Cruiser is ugly not tremendously so but it's certainly no beauty and it gets a 3 out of 10 acceleration the GT does 0 to 60 in 6.2 seconds and it gets a 3 out of 10 handling is surprisingly poor it really feels like Chrysler modified the acceleration and left everything else the same and it gets only a 3 out of 10 fun factor is okay mostly because of the acceleration and it gets a 4 out of 10 finally cool factor and this is a PT Cruiser it deserves the lowest possible score it's helped out only by the fact that this is the cool PT Cruiser and it earns a 2 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 15 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features it doesn't have much and it earns a 3 out of 10 Comfort is average and it earns a 5 out of 10 quality is mediocre the interiors crap and even though these are reasonably reliable it doesn't deserve more than a 4 out of 10 practicality is decent given its size and its cargo area and it earns a 7 out of 10 finally value and these aren't great cars so they deserve to be cheap and they are but given the performance for the money it earns a reasonably good 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 25 out of 50 add it up and the dug score is 40 out of 100 I've never reviewed a competitor to the PT Cruiser but here it is against other weird cars from its era where it scores decently I wouldn't buy a PT Cruiser GT but it really is the best of the worst and I'm glad I got the chance to check it out [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,147,022

Rating: 4.7510757 out of 5

Keywords: chrysler pt cruiser, pt cruiser, pt cruiser review, chrysler pt cruiser review, chrysler pt review, chrysler pt gt, chrysler pt cruiser gt, pt cruiser gt, gt cruiser, chrysler gt cruiser, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: _RCiHO-GA2E

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/irridisregardless]

Those door pockets look like Crocs

[u/mightbeabotidk]

"I borrowed this from a user"

Oh... Wait, oh NO

[u/realtomatocatsup]

Damn u/Doug-DeMuro you weren't kidding when you said wait til January for interesting quirky cars haha.

[u/burntcookie90]

The defroster "pedestal" is symmetrical with the cigarette lighter panel.

[u/PhAnToM444]

In the words of John Oliver, “The PT Cruiser: a car that looks like the sporty version of a hearse”

[u/nukelauncher95]

Those hooks on the pillars are for the folding seats. You know the fancy folding seats from the Honda Fit? The PT Cruiser had them first. The seats also can be removed completely.

[u/dont_wear_a_C]

oh man, he's gone and done it.

too bad he couldn't review one that had that wood panel "vintage" look lol

[u/OhHelloPlease]

I used to work at Budget Rent-a-Car in 2006 - we had the 2 door convertible GT Cruiser when I was working there. It was the worst version of the best version of the worst car.

[u/lookcloserlenny]

Looking back I still can't believe how popular the PT Cruisers were when they first came out. They were honestly a sensation in 2001, I guess we were just starved for something new design wise?

/u/Doug-DeMuro would you consider reviewing a 2005 Mustang (first of the 5th gen)? You've done the 2003 Ford Thunderbird and now the PT cruiser, but IMO the '05 Mustang was the first to really nail the concept of a successful retro-modern style. It's kind of fun to think back to the early 2000s when people were desperate for new styles.