Faults:
Brand new vehicle, faulty since day one, main fault is that it pulls to the left very badly. It will pull from the fast lane of a motorway into the hard shoulder within a matter of seconds.
It failed a standard MOT inspection carried out by the Vehicle Inspectorate within the first few months.
Faulty speedo, permanently stuck at 120 mph although it hadn't been moving when this happened.
All the above faults have been confirmed by a qualified independent engineer.
It also has a faulty fuel gauge, the battery went flat from new within a matter of months.
General Comments:
The selling dealership has done absolutely everything to avoid taking their legal responsibility in this case, they have tried and FAILED to fix the vehicle on 5 separate occasions.
In fact Chrysler have acted in a manner in which they are backing the lies of the dealer, probably because it is one of their biggest dealers in London.
This particular Chrysler/Jeep vehicle and almost every other vehicle manufactured by them has suffered from a vast number of quality/design/build defects in the US for many years now.
Chrysler have been renowned for their very poor quality/after sales service for ages in the States, but as they are relatively new to the UK not many sources of information are available for counsumers to make an informed choice about these vehicles.
My advice, be careful, be very careful. Voyager came up very badly in Top Gear JD Power survey, and has received very bad ENCAP ratings. Incidently, the new PT Cruiser has also suffered from bad press in it's first few months of release.
It seems that Chrysler are heading towards building the very same bad reputation as they have in the US.
26th Dec 2003, 08:26
I agree, the 1996-2001 voyager is a very nice car with lots of space and it looks just as good as it handles.
But it's not all fun and laughter;
The diesel engine is totally outdated, even back in 1998. Being built by an Italian company, VM, who's specialty is building engines for industrial purposes it just cannot give you the drive-ability like an engine designed to be in a car. It also produces a heap of noise at higher rev's, say around 3500. VM also integrated a very nice little time bomb in the '96/'97/some '98 models;
- Instead of having the crankshaft driving the cam and fuel pump with gears they've mounted a chain... and it breaks when you least expect it.
Mine broke when we were on holiday in the south of Spain and it took 10 days to repair at a price of $1500. Fortunately there was no harm done to the valves.
I don't know why they decided to change the gears to a chain, but that was not a smart idea. They figured it out themselves because on later models they changed it back to gears!