1995 Dodge Avenger ES review from North America

I bought my Avenger about a month ago and loved it... until now. The engine was replaced about 40K miles ago, so the high miles did not deter me.

There were a few little cosmetic problems with it (rear-view mirror had some sun damage, passenger-side door jams occasionally), but nothing a quick trip to the junk-yard couldn't fix.

Then a few days ago, after a 40 minute ride on the highway, and without any warning, one of the lower ball-joints on the driver side completely sheared off, collapsing my suspension and pulling the axle shaft right out of the transmission. I kept my cool, and had the car towed to a reliable dealership.

They informed me that the damage was "consistent with impact, and not applicable to the recall". This made me very angry. The previous owner didn't seem like the lying type. He informed me that the suspension had been serviced by a dealership prior (and indeed it had). He also never eluded to any kind of 'impact' and I'm working on getting a CarFax report to verify that now. Long story short, it will probably cost me on the order of $1000.00 to repair the damage to a $2000 car I have owned for a month. I should mention that if you have this car, check the ball-joints! If this had happened to me 2 minutes earlier I would have been going 70MPH, most likely killing my girlfriend and I. Someone else's negligence almost killing us is bad enough... having to shell out half of the car's initial cost to repair the problem is unacceptable. I will never buy another late-model Mopar EVER.

I own a 1970 Plymouth Duster and love it. It's had simple little problems, but never anything that stranded me, let alone almost killed me. Back then they made cars like they should.

My family owns somewhere around 5 antique Mopars between all of us. I love the brand affiliation (even have a pentastar tattoo on my back), however I'll never buy another one newer than 1976 - Sorry guys, you let me down big-time.