2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser Limited Edition from North America - Comments

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.

Sorry to hear about your accident. But you have the concept of anti-lock brakes all wrong. ABS does not decrease your stopping distance, it in fact increases it. What ABS does is to pulse (grab and let go repeatedly) your brakes. The point of this is to keep the wheels turning so that you can steer under heavy breaking. If you hit your brakes and they lock up you will stop quicker, because of the increased drag from the rubber scraping against the asphalt, but you cannot steer. Studies have been done that indicate that there have been no significant decrease in accidents as a result of ABS fitment because people do not use it correctly. As you brake hard and the ABS is activated your next action should be to steer away from the danger. perhaps if that was done you would have been able to avoid the accident, by driving around it, as opposed to stopping before you got to it.

The problem you had with your brakes seems rather odd. The brake booster is the only part of the brake system directly connected with the engine. A hose connects the booster and the intake manifold of the engine. The problem is that this hose does not blow into the booster, it is actually a vacuum hose. There is also a check valve on that hose to prevent any reverse flow of fluids. So there is no way that engine oil could have gotten to the brake system that way. The only logical explanation is that somebody inadvertently poured oil in the brake reservoir. And perhaps that person didn't know the difference so when asked if they messed with the brake fluid they said no. As far as they were concerned they added oil to the car. Just a thought.

The situation with the fog lights staying on is apparently a widespread problem. Search for "PT Cruiser fog lights" and you'll find reports of other owners having the same problem. I have a 2001 Cruiser that just started having this problem (Jan 2008) at 50k miles.

I'm a moderator of a large PT forum. Dozens of questions come into the forum about problems with lights and especially fog lights. The problems all come from the multifunction stalk on the steering column which controls all the lights. There are parts in the stalk that will melt (shown to us in detail from a Master Mechanic) and will cause the lights/fog lights to stay on indefinitely. The only way to shut them off is by pulling the fuse. The stalk can be replaced easily or of course taken to the dealer or personal mechanic to handle.