Chrysler PT Cruiser: Still Bad?

The Chrysler PT Cruiser ended production on July 9, 2010, almost thirteen years ago now, going out with a whimper after a decade of at first making a splash and then aging out in warp speed. In its review of the PT Cruiser’s debut model year of 2001, Car & Driver very earnestly referred to it as “cool,” several times, at least as opposed to the minivans of the day. By 2010, its final model year, Car & Driver said “it mostly just feels old,” which is where critical consensus has more or less rested since then.

Time Magazine Turned Lee Iacocca’s Face Into an Automotive Work of Art

The knocks on the PT Cruiser are considerable: That it is underpowered (150 horsepower for a car that weighed a little more than 3,000 pounds is not a crime against humanity or anything but sure); that it looks bad (the retro styling was a fun little gimmick but not much more than that); that competitors were better (was the Chevy HHR or Scion xB really that much better? Well, the Scion was, yes); that the fuel economy was bad (21 mpg combined is, indeed, bad, especially for the Great Recession); that the car never really changed and had too many special editions (a familiar refrain for almost any Chrysler product); and that it was just plainly ill-conceived, a minivan for people who think of themselves as too cool for minivans but still want one but, for some reason, also small.

Meanwhile, Consumer Reports, which can actually claim to rigorously test cars, sums up the PT Cruiser this way:

This tall front-wheel-drive wagon dressed in retro-rod sheet metal has a versatile interior, easy access, and secure, predictable handling. Acceleration is anemic with its naturally aspirated engine, especially with the automatic, but a good deal better with turbocharged versions. A wide turning circle hinders maneuverability. The ride is somewhat stiff and the cabin a bit noisy, plus fuel economy was never that great. A convertible version was offered from 2005 to 2008, but wind noise was very pronounced. The PT Cruiser was discontinued after the 2010 model year.

Recent auction results at Bring A Trailer suggest that the modern market still more or less agrees:

Screenshot: Bring A Trailer

It was, to be sure, a pretty strange time in American automaking history, the aughts, when retro was in (remember the eleventh-generation Ford Thunderbird?) but before gas prices went sky high in the latter part of that decade and the Great Recession happened, and cars from the 2010s began to look different from the decade before. Fuel economy was in, for one thing, and there was no room for a car like the PT Cruiser, in any case, and maybe there should have never been. Now, though: The PT Cruiser? Still bad?