Dodge Hornet | A Stinging Sensation
Welcome to a video on the Dodge hornet in this video we’re going to dissect Dodge as a brand and what it’s like to have your identity stripped from you now that they have to foro the V8 era of vehicles it would be like asking Al
Capone not to be Al Capone so what do you do your bread and butter is gone what people know you for is gone and now we’re left with this and probably a few other products that are going to be attempting to do something different the Dodge Hornet is a CUV that they’ve taken
An architecture that is very old and tried to create something new out of it and the angle that they’re going for is fun and fast okay in this I’m going to talk a little bit more seriously about it and Jack is as well and when you look
At it most people just see the proportions they like it’s not so bad it is a very smooth looking appearance it’s not shouty it is also not over styled this hearkens back to some of the older Dodge products that may have been a little bit more cohesively designed on
The outside and inside and I’d say because of the stellantis connection they have access to more resources and part sharing so what you’ve done here is this seems much better than what they used to do namely when you compare it to something like the compass or their commodity Jeep Vehicles the interior of
This car looks and I’m not I’m just going to say it it looks like somebody studied Audi interior the way that the whole center console is the switch gear for the HVAC the door panels there’s a lot of like European influence in here and in some cases it
Works quite well it looks more upscale for what it is and granted this is going to be pushing you know $40,000 in most cases but of course there’s going to be a lot of incentives on this um it is one of the better Dodge Interiors from a quality perspective but you know they’ve
Typically been behind in that game so it’s really good to see that they’re making effort they know that this is very important Now is it going to be important to the Dodge enthusiasts the people that have gone to Dodge in the past and that’s something that they’re
Going to find out very soon seat wise great seats the usability and ergonomics is really good the storage is pretty decent overall and the way that everything is laid out is easy to use back seat room is about average for this class and so is the cargo capacity with
The seats up it’s clear that you’re going to struggle putting things in the back and I I noticed this right away I’m like it’s not all that different from like a larger sedan uh it’s certainly not going to be class leading if you’re looking for Pure cargo capacity you’re
Going to go to a more traditional like CUV SUV everything else in here in terms of infotainment and technology is a little bit more sorted out uh compared to some of the other brands that are in this price range the infotainment seems slow this seems to operate pretty well
But there is more crashes it it does glitch out and get slow once in a while but it is pretty quick to boot up phones pair quickly uh in terms of tech in terms of the electronic gauge cluster I noticed that the frontal crash mitigation system is always canceling
Itself out and erroring out it’s something that we definitely noticed the horn also doesn’t work which is probably indicative of this car being serviced and maybe having the wheel removed and not reconnected so God knows what’s been going on with this car in the background so I don’t want to judge everything just
On face value but this is one of their better interior jobs it’s one of their better layouts and it’s one of their more cohesive designs whether that’s completely a Dodge thing or really their their shared resources is another matter but Jack’s going to tell you about the
Technical attributes of this car in the shop in the shop with the Dodge Hornet RT now as Mark mentioned in the beginning of this video this is a very important product for Dodge because it represents Dodge’s next chapter a chapter in which Dodge has to figure out
What they are in a post Hellcat World they can no longer rest on their Laurels of being that muscle car manufacturer they have to prove to their customers that Dodge is still a viable option and to be honest they are leaning into what Dodge used to mean for a lot of people
Sporty somewhat inexpensive fun so the Hornet specifically is a small nonpremium CUV which competes in a very very competitive class Vehicles like the CRV which is excellent the Rav 4 which will outlive you and I the CX5 which is great and about a billion other SUVs is
This class The Hornet is thrusted into and what they’re trying to do as an organization Dodge that is is build the sportiest non premium CUV which is an interesting sort of Niche to put yourself in so the Hornet GT which is the base model this car comes with
Essentially two trim levels the GT and the RT the GT with its four cylinders apparently the most powerful non pre premium quickest CUV for around $31,000 it’s good for 0 to 60 about 6 and2 seconds now moving past that what is this car from a technical perspective
Well it has a mechanical clone that is the alfare Mayo tonali it is a vehicle that is on the small wide Fiat stantis platform it is their long wheelbase variant which also underpins the Jeep Compass this is a very very old architecture which traces its roots back
To the early 2000s with a small Fiat SUV obviously it’s been massaged and changed over the decades it’s been around but that’s what you’re working with from a suspension perspective it is strut front and strut rear it is the only SUV I think I’ve ever been under with that
Configuration it is a Chapman 3 Link in the back and it is a mcferon strut front the cars or the trim levels the GT and the RT both come with Cony FSD passive dampers as standard when you option in the track package this is not a track car this is their sport pack
The base car and the RT both now get mlli dampers they’re a adaptive damper that has regular and Sport what’s good for slightly better body control and a sportier feel the cars the GT and the RT both have different steering ratios the RT is a little bit quicker the GT is a
Little bit slower both cars come with brake by wire as standard the RT gets four pot brembos and when you put the track pack on the GT it then uprates their smaller brakes to these four pots the nice thing to not about this this architecture as well is the weight
Balance is actually pretty decent it’s like 52 54% front and it’s relatively Nimble feeling fairly well covered up particularly when you compare it to the Jeep Compass and just like the alpha tonali the lift points are covered up with these axis panels which I guarantee you you’re going to break off the fourth
Or fifth time you go and uh try to lift this car up it has little push pins that do not actually have a screw head so you actually have to get in there with a panel popper and I can guarantee you that when you take this to a Dodge
Dealer in 3 years every one of these things is going to be broken off now let’s talk about drivetrains the GT and the RT are the two vehicles the GT is $31,000 the RT is in the low 40s the GT trim level which We’re Not underneath gets the hurricane 4 cylinder 2 L
Turbocharged engine it’s good for about 268 horsepower and 295 ftlb of torque that is on premium gas it’s combined fuel economies about about 24 and it has a on demand traditional all-wheel drive system it is a lighter car it has a curb weight around 3700 lb and it has torque
Vectoring by breake that’s how they simulate a limited slip differential I’ve not driven that car and it puts its power down through a 9-speed automatic it is the ZF gearbox it’s not great it’s not terrible but it’s a tried and true drive train now the RTS come with the
Identical mechanical drivetrain out of the US back toenail it is a 1.3 l turbocharged 4 cylinder engine combined with e all-wheel drive an electric motor and the rear axle and a small battery pack the e- motor in the back produces 188 foot- PBS of torque so total system
Output is actually higher than the tonali and that’s purely down to software and this vehicle has Hot Shot mode basically boost mode you pull both paddles you get an extra 15 horsepower this vehicle is allegedly really good for 0 to 60 in the mid fivs when you put
It in boost mode and you get a good launch the main thing is it is heavier than the base car or the GT the battery pack which is 15.5 kwatt hours it’s about 273 lbs it’s in the rear of this vehicle right below the trunk it compromises trunk space a little bit by
About 5 cubic feet it’s 273 lb weight Delta just in the battery pack alone it’s a lithium ion pack the car has an e- range of about 30ish miles I haven’t got gotten that but it is very very cold in Illinois right now past that though
Let’s go take this for a quick drive and walk you through what it’s like to live With put be in Power Shot mode Mark yeah it’s time for Power Shot Jack you actually have to ship in this car it’ll let you ride red line that’s pretty crazy for something like this but then again I mean it makes sense if you’re trying to make some type of
Performance thing so Jack you spent a lot of time a lot of time doing research on this car because nobody’s really talking about what it is or it’s not and we kind of joked around about the Tali to the point of the video really doesn’t offer much so here it is you want
Information you got it let’s talk about it all right let’s talk about ride quality we’re in sport mode right now it is basically a little stiff it’s it’s not terrible the car has got reasonable body control for what it is being a tall CUV in regular mode the Morelli dampers
This has the track pack rides pretty well I think you know given the class of car that it is it’s not bad and I think my takea away from this is you know you have the MSRP and then you have the actual real price of this vehicle and
The real price this is not a RT plus just a regular RT with a performance package you’re getting these things for the low 40 really high 30s and what it’s offering you is a little bit more Dynamic of a driving experience than something like a CRV and way more involving to drive than
A Rav 4 it is substantially quicker it’s 0 to 60 in the mid fivs and it it feels like it feels like that I guess and you have the pH factor of this vehicle you’re getting 20 miles or 25 miles maybe 30 if you’re lucky of e- range and
For $40,000 I can’t think of another small SUV that offers those factors is it a remarkable Driving Experience no but to be fair none of these cars in this class are they have in some ways delivered on what they’re trying to offer in this segment which is a plugin
Hybrid that is quick in a straight line and is not entirely like fall asleep to drive and so what do you think about the rest of the vehicle things like the steering the transmission the brakes all L of that fun stuff I mean it to me it
Feels like a a tarted up Jeep Compass you know in a lot of ways right like it’s quieter uh the damping is way better the steering is better it’s way more responsive obviously because we’re dealing with more power from the plugin hybrid it it’s it’s taking that platform
And trying to to refine it to the point of it’s kind of bordering on the entry level luxury thing for a CUV so it’s not it doesn’t feel as like an like an economy CUV as much it’s definitely quick it’s quiet it’s pretty refined overall um the the hybrid powertrain
Part of this isn’t is completely smooth and this is something I noticed on all all of these types of vehicles is there’s a lot of lugging of the engine to get you up to the highest gear so it it always feels like it’s uh just
Chugging to to get you up in the highest gear for fuel efficiency but other than that to to be completely fair to this from what it is underneath to what they’ve made it into is quite refined it’s way more refin than I expected for this price point if you compare this to
Some of the older Dodge commodity SUVs like the journeys and the compass and the god the caliber this is on another planet does it make it a great SUV in this Class this is a hard one and I think you know before we get too much in the philosophy I guess the last thing I’m going to ask you gearbox and brakes how do they feel so that it’s it’s interesting just driving this hard because the brake pedal is obviously
It’s a load cell it’s Break by wire Break by wire so you got like 2 in of travel where the sensor’s picking up and everything else is just spring-loaded like it does nothing after a certain point the other thing I noticed like I was just screwing around in the
Roundabout and I noticed this a little bit more but this confirms it it will not let you go any faster like normal stability control lets you get power and then it cuts it on and off cuts it on and off to like give you a little bit
Here and there this just literally will not go down a gear it will not kick down and it will not allow you to reach past a certain level of lateral G so instead of just bouncing off the stability control and brakes it’s like okay I know
The GeForce that you’re at I’m not going to give you any more power to get around the corner it’s an interesting implementation clearly if you’re buying this you know it’s got It’s it’s all marketing almost all the performance stuff here is just marketing nonsense nobody’s buying this to to go to a track
Or whatever so it’s like this strange in between for me of okay you got some of the performance things you want from a CUV that’s mostly faux it’s just BS to to get you into this car yeah and I think that all right that’s going to lead me back into the philosophical part
And we had a long discussion you know before before this drive about what Dodge is and I sort of alluded to it in the shop let me say one thing before you say that you know I grew up with Dodge products right my mom had a learon I had
A Sundance I had a lot of these horrible generation Chrysler product cars right and then you know the first car that they had made that really impressed a lot of people was the neon like when I drove the neon RT and some of these like earlier Neons that were great for a
Small car it was the first time we had seen an American car manufacturer kind of get it right and it was the era where it could be good right they were Ultra lightweight they were engaging to drive and then all the American brands seem to just
Stop caring about them I don’t know if it was just internal philosophy or what it was but they all moved towards bigger vehicles trucks and one of the things that this brand one of their failings is they’re so far behind because all the other brands have kept their cars around
And developed the small car platform Toyota with Corolla and Camry scaling it out Honda with Civic and Accord scaling it out VW with the golf and all the smaller iterations scaling those out to bigger vehicles um and this company what they did was they kept badier alive the badier assembly plant
To put some of their worst small cars in it and they never evolved it out so now they’re so behind the a balls the Koreans are far more advanced the Germans are better the Japanese are better and pretty much everybody else aside from the American brands have
Figured out how to do this even Mazda is way better than this so it leads me to the question to you aside from the marketing why would you even consider buying this over basically what everybody else has figured out doing way before them it’s the price and the pH
Factor and the fact that you want to have a little 1% of fun versus something like a rap for is it really fun though you and I are so broken internally of what fun is and what isn’t if you’re coming out of like an old Compass or an
Old CRV or old rap for and you get into this thing be blown away by the performance if coming from an American car thing American small C this is like next level but if you’re if you’re used to some of what the other brands have done this this to me other than going
Fast in a straight line I and the plugin hyb the plugin Hybrid part of it under warranty of course under warranty what else what else do you have I I and I I don’t know and I think that’s the question Dodge has to answer and that’s getting back to my the point
Is Dodge is now a different brand I mean they can’t rest on their Laurels of being a muscle car brand the thing that Dodge had going for them for a very long time is when you thought of Dodge you got a regular person to think about Dodge Jokes Aside you thought about a
Hellcat going sideways and that noise and the fact that they are the muscle car manufacturer for Better or For Worse they’re the brand that makes like you jokingly call them like uh meat head masterpieces right right they can’t do that anymore so they are trying to reinvent themselves in a world where
They don’t have the six .2 L with a blower they have to work with four cylinders hybrids phvs and EVS to to rebuild their brand identity and what are they going to do and how are they going to manage that and I think they’re going to have to figure out how they
Make sporty Whimsical cars using those drivetrains and whether or not they’re buyers and their buyers are a Fickle bunch of people right they are dieh hard Dodge people are going to accept this new way of thinking yeah and and to to be fair to them I do not envy that
Position because let’s to to your point they’re known for brash loud emotional cars and it’s like taking it’s like saying you are known for being a big metal band and then all of a sudden you can’t play metal anymore and you move over to soft rock you know it’s it’s
Like you can’t do what you’re good at anymore so now what do you do how do you evolve yourself yeah and I I don’t know I don’t know how they’re going to do it honestly because everybody’s going to be doing even and plug in hybrids like sooner rather than later aside from
Putting speakers on the outside and making the things just obliterate their tires I you know I don’t know how they catch up and I I would not want to be in that position and I it makes sense why the marketing is so uh vicious with this like so ridiculous because they’re
Trying to to do it on the marketing side and I I don’t know are people going to buy into it I don’t know and I think that’s something this brand is going to have to work on that they for them to survive right the Challenger in the
Charger as of making this video now are dead yeah right I mean the the Dodge now has What two products the Durango and this thing all right and you krysler has one car Pacifica and I you know Ram is great they’ve been around for forever and Jeep is still competitive but Dodge
As a brand now has to figure out what do they want to be and how do they compete you know behind being behind the eightball with everybody else yeah so with that Mark let’s head into the final thoughts where you can summarize the pros and the cons of the Dodge or sounds good Well if you made it all the way to the end it looks like you just got stung by the Dodge Hornet the clear takeaway is this brand is really trying you can tell with this car they did everything they could with what they with the resources they had and it’s going to be
Interesting to see what direction they take not only from the marketing side but the the product quality side so the interior clearly is a step up uh and you can thank probably multiple resources for making that happen and they’re taking something that they’ve had for a long time and trying to make it
Continually evolving and make it better the question is is this even with the discounts going to be enough for people to buy this for the long term because this is not a luxury product right this is not a lease vehicle where you’re like okay I’m going to lease it and then get
Rid of it this is in the price point where people are buying real commodity cars like CRV RAV fors CR trucks all of that where they’re going to buy it to keep it so this notion of very complicated hybrid system plugin hybrid system at this point so there’s got to
Be some reason why they can get it down to this this price is it going to be reliable what’s the resale value going to be what’s the cost to repair what’s the dealer Network like I think this is where people don’t have a ton of money
To spend or don’t want to spend a ton of money on something and they just want to drive it and never think about it long term so again we’re going to have to see where this goes just like the tanali um overall it is good as a new product it
Drives great you know you have the electric range part of it uh the handling is good some of the things they’ve integrated into it in the interior are pretty well done so uh time will tell and that’s where I’m going to leave it thanks for watching I’ll see you next Video you
We drive and review the 2024 Dodge Hornet Plug in Hybrid to determine if this SUV is a worthy option. After a long history of V8 powered monsters from Dodge they enter an era now competing with brands who have mastered the affordable family segment with little drama. Will the old Dodge mentality work here or is this a lost cause? Others to consider are Mazda CX30, CX5 Honda CRV, HRV, Toyota RAV4, Corolla Cross, Nissan Rogue, and Chevy Equinox.
#cars #engineering #technology
Index:
00:00 Interior and Exterior
3:44 Mechanical Impressions
9:08 Driving Impressions and Philosophy
19:30 Final Thoughts
