EP37: Best of the Bay Part 4 - Fiat 500E, Dodge Durango Hellcat, Acura ZDX

In this episode, Jon reviews three vehicles, he discusses the Fiat 500e, highlighting its small size, aggressive regenerative braking, and plasticky interior, questioning its value considering depreciation. Next, he delves into the Dodge Durango Hellcat, lauding its 707 horsepower engine but critiquing its high price and overall build quality compared to competitors like Lexus and Genesis. Finally, he briefly evaluates the Acura ZDX, noting its competent performance but ultimately finding it unmemorable. Throughout, Jon shares anecdotes about technology glitches and driving experiences.

Notes

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

Accept – Restless and Wild
Fiat 500E – Perfectly adequate car. Luddite struggles getting it into gear. Nice evolution of the previous model. J would recommend one, but used. Let someone else suffer the depreciation hit of a new EV!!!!
Over enthusiastic driver aids, the Acura ZDX a “500hp mother hen”
Fiat overhears J’s muttering, tries to help me
Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction – Holy Gasoline
Dodge Durango Hellcat vs. Genesis GV80. Durango Hellcat vs. Lexus GX550 AND Elantra N. That 707hp V8, J’s Best Piece Of Technology. Center tach, like a 911 or a Gixxer. Durango Hellcat vs. Ram SRT-10, and aero limited top speed. Stable at high speed. But the news is the organic power delivery. Is the price even relevant, is this already a collector car?
Acura ZDX – Low wide station wagon shape instead of Rivian style tall upright SUVs
Zodiac Mindwarp – Airline Highway

Transcript

[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good day, good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the motoring historian, part four. Of the best of the bay driving days that I did so a review of the Fiat 500e the electric one the Dodge Durango Hellcat the one with the 707 horsepower Hellcat motor as you might expect from the name and the [00:01:00] Acura ZDX which that company was kind of forgettable but yeah without further ado So it’s applicable that I’ve just taken a swig of my espresso because the next thing I drove was the Fiat 500e.

This is easily the smallest and, uh, you know, least impressive of, uh, of the stuff that we drove in terms of like, you know, look at my swinging kind of thing. But. A perfectly adequate product. Plasticky on the inside, but I mean, who cares, right? This is an economy car. I actually like the simplicity of the design.

As I say, I struggled to, as I was saying in another part of the presentation here, I struggled to find out how to make it go. You know, I was in, I found the start button, then I was like, how do I put it into gear? And they’ve moved the buttons onto the center console, like where normally the heater controls or the radio would be back in a car in the, from the 20th century.

But you know, obviously once somebody, it’s like cut and paste, once they’ve showed you how to do it, once you know how to drag and drop a paragraph around in Word, you’re like, Oh, [00:02:00] you know, my life has changed forever. It’s that feeling, you know, once you know how to do it, it’s easy, right? And it becomes hard to believe that you were ever numpty enough not to know how to pop it in gear.

First thing I wrote down about it was that it has a very aggressive regenerative breaking and you can modulate that. But it’s clear that there’s less thought gone into the design of how the one pedal driving experience is far less than, you know, Hyundai spent on the Ioniq or Lucid did, and really the comparison between the Fiat 500 and the Lucid, it shows just in the, you know, with practice, you can drive the Fiat smoothly, but it does Take a little bit of practice and it’s a little bit herky jerky more as Citroen used to be than you’re the way my mum used to be trying to drive a car with a clutch.

Forgive me, mum, but very jumpy in that white Fiesta that we had. So 500 was a facelift, right? So it’s got like strakes across the lights and [00:03:00] things on the face of it. You might look at it and be like, is that even a new model? The answer is yes, it is. The more you look, more you’ll see how is the new model stylish?

Actually, when you look closely stylish evolution of the, of the design, it’s got a big ev wine, like a real, like, hi, I’m electric. You know, like that milk flow sound. For those of us who grew up in suburban England in the late 20th century, the wine of the milk flow is, is there, I’m not a fan. I mean, I never was gonna be a fan of this kind of car and I don’t like as, as I’ve.

I think I’ve said elsewhere in the presentation, I don’t like the fact that Fiat 500s always have this sit up and beg position. Did I like it? No. Was it a good car? Yes. Is it the right solution for many people? Yes. Although I just wonder, you know, would you buy it new and eat the depreciation? You know, I’d probably try and find some.

Secondhand EV where some other tree hugging schmuck had eaten the depreciation pill [00:04:00] earlier. I wrote here, tire roar noticeable. It’s fine around town. Screen and air conditioning are easy to use. Oh, there’s an amusing thing that happened. A couple of times, a couple of the cars, the technology sort of tripped up.

So the Honda, it like wanted to break cause it saw the car in front breaking. So it was like, ah, emergency, like car in front, it’s stopping. Like, ah, you got a break. And I’m like, dude, I’m like 50 feet away from the car in front. Like cool your boots. And it settled down once the car had like turned off, but I’d never had that before where the car had been like, Oh, we’re going to crash.

Like, cause like the gauge flashed red. I don’t know what kind of car has 500 horsepower and isn’t, and is like a old mother hen like that. It’s really bizarre. Sorry, Acura. Jake, the, the rep from Acura, really nice guy, but the product is, it’s not that the product is off the pace. Because it isn’t, right?

Because that, on the [00:05:00] prologue, that low wide stance, really cool. But there was, I don’t know, I mean, the car had only done 100 miles. The Acura ZDX that did this like flash for me. So I don’t know, you know, maybe those kind of warning systems were still tuning themselves in. But that was the most serious incident where, You know, where the technology got in my way and was like, you know, when, and you’re like, dude, just settle the fuck down and act like you were a 1980 CRX, the Fiat 500.

It’s one was the AI. They’re like the voice listening their voice. Sensing thing must have been working because at one point I was talking to myself. I don’t know what I said, but I said something out loud and the car was like, what was that? Can I help you? Pardon? And all this kind of cars trying to start a damn conversation with me.

And all I’d done was like mutter about somebody moving into my lane. It was like I’d done like a fucking L or something [00:06:00] like that. I just had one of those in the car was like, what? Like, can I help you? Sir, you know, would you like a paper hat with that? And I’m just like, out of my face, dumb technology. Oh, I also triggered the emergency break.

That’s the other thing. It was for a second triggered the emergency breaking on the fear. The Acura that I just talked about, that was a, that was a separate incident. Now, I think of it, those were the three things. So I guess whilst I like the fear, that technology feels like it’s not quite tuned in properly yet, even for the kind of people who like it.

And I obviously. Hate that kind of technology. I quite like this little Fiat, despite it, even despite it asking me, you know, over waiting on me and, uh, the emergency braking going off. Cause it said I was too close to the traffic in front. It’s like, who’s driving me or you car, but I’m driving.[00:07:00]

So from the sublime to the ridiculous, cause it went from the Fiat 500.

To the Dodge Durango Hellcat. I think it was some silver bullet last call. Get a gas guzzling V8 while you can kind of special edition. Silver matte black hood really looked good. This is a three row SUV with a 707 horsepower supercharged V8. Nice bull’s blood leather. Interior in it that actually was kind of nicer than the rest of the interior.

There was that sort of a mismatch and I sat in it and I’d driven it before I looked at the price. [00:08:00] And were it the same price as the Genesis and the Lexus, you might allow your heart and that epic engine to win you over. But, hand on heart, even died in the war confirmed gearhead like me, were it my money, for the same money, I’d take the Genesis GV Coupe over the Hellcat Durango.

That’s if they were the same money, but the GVs, they were 70 to 80ish. This Hellcat. It was 115. 113. One was 115, one was 113. It was the range and the Durango were the two most expensive. I’m here to tell you, the Durango felt overpriced. It felt like a, you taking the piss because this is not in the same, the bill quality was not even like close to the Lexus.

And the Lexus is like 30 grand less. Like you [00:09:00] literally, you could have had the Lexus and the Lan Elantra n. Instead of the Hellcat, but that’s missing the point. Isn’t it? The last best of the bay. I wasn’t able to make it because I wasn’t able to go for the whole time, but their best car was, you know, the best debate they picked was a stick shift Acura.

And, you know, Michael did joke at one point. What were you going to do if the Hellcat one kind of thing? And You know, I’m a sufficient Luddite that I steeled myself to make a good judgment and not allow myself to be blinded by that epic engine because I knew the engine was going to be impressive. And it was right.

It is an awesome thing. You know, one of the awards that we had to give was the best piece of technology. And honestly, without a trace of facetiousness, the best piece of technology we experienced there wasn’t the Lucids. Regen breaking, which I’ll talk more about later on, but that really is, that’s an awesome feat [00:10:00] of engineering.

I mean, that is an awesome feat of engineering, but it is not in the same league as 707 Horsepower of supercharged V8 let loose on the highway, that is just a thing unto itself. So you’re never allowed to forget about the engine in sport mode. It’s incredibly loud in normal mode. It’s bloody loud. You know, you don’t ever forget these cars about the engine.

It’s like a Porsche 911 or a Suzuki tach is right in the middle and the speedo and all the other stuff is just off to the side. It’s got all these track modes and launch modes. I didn’t play around with with any of that stuff. I just got out on the highway and pressed the loud pedal. You know, for a while I looked at those Ram SRT10 pickup trucks.

That is a Ram pickup truck with a Dodge Viper [00:11:00] 8 litre normally aspirated V10 in it. In concept, it’s pretty cool. They don’t, they can’t tow that much, but you can tow a car in them. The gas mileage is bad, but what would you expect? They’re expensive to maintain, but you know, what would you expect kind of thing?

But really what put me off is that for a truck you want torque, and this is a race motor that makes all its power high up. So really, you know, people burnouts and then sell them. A lot of them have very, uh, have a very high number of, of owners. So as I sort of. Passed out that I didn’t really want this SRT 10 truck.

One of the things that always stuck in my mind about them was that that motor in the Viper makes it like a 200 mile an hour car, 190, 200 mile an hour car. The truck can do 140. Arrow limited, and I would never have thought that, you know, I’d have thought 500 horsepower was 500 horsepower. If, if an E type with 270 horsepower can [00:12:00] knock on the door of 150 miles an hour, if my a MG Mercedes de restricted when new, you know, a 2000 and, you know, W2 10 E 55, supposedly called to Wikipedia de restricted, can do 175 miles an hour, 350 horseback Ferrari, Daytona.

350 horsepower AMG Benz. This is mid 170s, isn’t it? So it seems to me, I thought, you know, 500 horsepower would inevitably mean that you were looking at more than that. But the error effect is significant in the case of those rams. The same is the case with with this Durango, and I was surprised by how error limited it was.

It was pretty stable high speed. It certainly was fun. Um, it certainly is. more fun. There is a difference in the organic power delivery of a gasoline or [00:13:00] diesel powered vehicle versus the electric whoosh of Of an ev right there, there is a difference. So it’s not about the amount of horsepower, it’s the way that the power is, is delivered.

And that contrast was actually most noticeable between the Ionic five N and the Elantra N. It’s the, just the way the power comes in. And the Elantra just left me feeling like an old pair of slippers, whereas the Ionic five left me feeling like was I, I feel like halfway between a PlayStation and real life.

The Durango is definitely on the real life section. It’s an absolute beast. I wonder if the price is even relevant because this is a future classic. Like, you can’t get that V8 anymore after this year. You can’t get it in a sedan or coupe wrapper even now. You know, it’s, it’s over. And yes, this new inline six that they do, they’re going to turbo charge for more power soon enough.

[00:14:00] But this, this Hellcat is the last of the American V8s. And if you look at that. In that context, it’s not the last is the Ford Mustang will be, but if you look at it in, in that context, it seems a bit silly to wrap it in a three row SUV body, to be honest. Like, I feel like, you know, if you want a Hellcat buy a 50 grand Challenger and a 50 grand Hemi Durango.

You know, when, and yeah, to say I was underwhelmed is completely the wrong thing. I wasn’t underwhelmed. Like I loved it. Like I, I drove further than I drove. Any of the other cars drove beyond the end of the designated test route. And I still didn’t want to turn around. And I drove up a little lane and the surface was rough and it was twisty.

And I, you know, I wanted to fling it down there and see how it rode the bumps. See if I could try and make a case for a 700 horsepower, three row SUV. And I got out and, you know, walk around it and took [00:15:00] pictures and, and was, was smitten with it. But not only was it not the best, it just wasn’t the most charismatic, just complete package.

It was, uh, rather like. Reminded me a lot of that SRT 10 RAM that the engine was epic and the idea of pickup truck was epic. But you know, you don’t want mustard on ice cream and, and that was how I felt. You know, the mustard belongs on the roast beef and the chocolate sauce on the ice cream. And you know, that engine in the GV80.

Oh, now I see why people love Hellcat Chargers. Why the Chargers was so popular, even alongside the Challengers. So I wrote down that it had a Harmon card stereo, which you’d expect for the price point, wouldn’t you? The lovely smell, our canara steering wheel, so it felt sporty. It had a fan seat, so like you could have the, like, the cool air blowing up your ass crack, and the, our canara steering wheel being heated and [00:16:00] that was, was pretty cool.

I wrote noisy and guttural, even in normal mode, let alone sport. The modes were really easy to use. And it was easy to sort of bespoke up the suspension and you could do that on the fly, you know, so that felt really usable. There is a noticeable supercharger whine and it is a million times cooler than that irritating EV whine.

Like here comes the milk float that a lot of them, that a couple of the cars had. Yeah, I just wrote the motor is always there.

So the Acura ZDX. So this is maybe more familiar to a lot of you as the Honda Prologue. I know somebody in the school pickup line is one of these Honda Prologues and, and where a lot of SUVs are going down the [00:17:00] sort of narrow, tall, kind of design, you know, more like Rivian, uh, more like the Land Rover Discovery and the Lexus is an example of that.

The Prologue’s of that in that it’s wider and lower, so it actually appears more like a sort of square or wider station wagon, traditional American station wagon or a state car, than it does seem like, uh, an SUV. I didn’t poke around in the trunk properly. I’d got back ended on the, the times and it was the last car of, of the day.

And I’ve got to say, I was feeling tired. So did I give it a fair crack of the whip? I certainly tried. As I mentioned earlier, it, it got upset with me because it said I was following another car too closely and, and tried to do the, uh, the emergency, uh, braking on me. At 544 horsepower, apparently, so, you know, the thing had plenty of, uh, of, of giddy up.

It didn’t feel that fast. I didn’t toggle with the modes very much. And [00:18:00] sadly, at the end of the day, it didn’t make that much of an impression. I did go back to look at it again afterwards, but I actually was distracted by the Lexus, and I went back and looked at the Lexus. I set out from, you know, at the end of the day, when I was looking at stuff right at the end, about before I did my voting, I set out to look at it again to try and form more of an opinion about it and, uh, ended up sitting in the Lexus again and thinking, Oh, that’s really nice quality.

So, you know, maybe within this, right, there’s a metaphor for the challenge that Acura have at the moment, which is that was this a bad product? Absolutely not. But was it in any way memorable in comparison to the other things that I experienced? No, no, it really wasn’t. You know, is it better objectively than the Hellcat?

Of course. Slight. By a country mile, but what the Hellcat had, and in fact, what the Genesis has in spades, the sort of design swagger, just the [00:19:00] coolness, just, uh, I’m paying 700 pounds, 700 a month for the next five years, but it’s cars. Bloody cool. I’m not sure if you’d feel like that about the ZDX. You know, I can’t remember what the interior looked like.

As I said, I was tired. Right. A lot of this, this might be more about me than about the car. And certainly I did lean on it before I’m driving wise. And you know, it just as all EVs tend to do, it just like did it all. It didn’t like fall apart at really high speeds. It just like did it all. I should say as well, the Fiat.

Enough speed for any normal bear, normal time. You know, I explored, uh, I explored that much. So for the Acura, I wrote the toggling for mode’s not perfect. Awesome ride, great ride, and it feels planted on the road. So sorry, Acura, that I haven’t given you as fair a crack there. I should have really driven that car again afterwards, so sorry about that.[00:20:00]

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