2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser Limited Edition review from North America

Well I bought the first Cruiser that came out in Augest of 2000. It was the very first one, so I did pay about $30,000 for it, and it was the top of the line.

Things that have gone wrong with this car...

Well it was never really the car, but there has been a lot of recalls of course, I'm sure because it's the first one.

Well... In the winter of I think 2002, I was taking a left hand turn and it was very slippery out, and my car slid right into the curb breaking a chunk of the chrome rims off. When I took it in to get fixed and things, a new rim for this model was $750 just for one of them! So I got just an after market one for the two front wheels, and had that for a while.

Something that really bothered me was that the brake pedal started to go to the floor when I was stopping, and sometimes it would go to the floor and the car would not be stopping. I had to get it towed to the Chrysler dealer because I almost got in an accident because of this. This cost over $600 dollars to fix because somehow engine oil got in the brake fluid, and I think it was the dealers fault because no one at my house messed with the brakes in my car. The guy at the dealer said that if it started to pull to the left sharply, that the WHOLE ABS stystem would have to be replaced and he said it would cost "Thousands" of dollars to get it fixed.

There was something in the winter time that would get very very annoying, and that was the traction control. Every time I was moving or starting to go from a stop sign or light, it would turn on because of the front tires "slipping" and it would make this very annoying noise that was like a really weird loud clicking noise, and the "TRAC" light would flash. I know this is normal, but it just got to be very loud and annoying.

So just this year in February of 2005, I got in an accident with this car. It was snowing out and I was on the freeway going probably 35mph, and a kid came flying around me and he tried to cut in front of me, and his tires hit a rut of the snow between lanes, and it made him spin out. I saw him and then there was a Semi Truck coming on the freeway, and I had my foot on the brake and the ABS light came on, and the ABS was working for me, but it just didn't stop me in time. I hit the kid right on the bumper, and it smashed the whole side of my Cruiser, and bent the door and smashed the front side of the car, and my car flew into the ditch.

The accident turned out to be not my fault, but I know my PT Cruiser did all it could to not hit the car.

The most recent thing to go with it, was that the fog lights didn't work for a couple of years. I guess they did work, but "too" well because they would stay on when the car was shut off, and it ran down my battery. So we just took the fuse out and left it like that for a couple years, then I decided one day to put the fuse back in just to see if they would turn off, but they didn't. I noticed if you turned on the left blinker they would shut off, but then a couple days later it started smoking in the steering column, and it was smelling very bad and smoking a lot.

So I had to take it in to the dealer and get that fixed, and that cost $300 dollars just for the dang blinker and headlight controller thing.

So far I think this car has been a very good, mostly dependable vehicle. I think it has nice safety features like the ABS, traction control, side airbags, and so on.

This car does not get very good gas mileage though, only about 27 mpg freeway. It has good pick up though - I drove down to Missouri and I was passing people left and right. But if the air conditioner is on, it really does bog down the car and doesn't make it have as good pickup.

It is hard to drive in the rain and in the snow, because the tires spin very easily. But hey, I guess that's what the traction control is for.