Speaking of Powered Liftgates...and 6 speed automatics

Jun 28, 2013 3 Replies

rented a Dodge Caravan for a week. Had powered sliding side doors and powered lift gate. Cool. But once the cool wore off all the powered bullshit does it make opening and closing the darn things much slower then non-powered ones. And of course there's more stuff to break. I know they have to offer it if any of teh competitors does but it's really so silly. Finding the right button on the key fob can take longer then just yanking the handle and opening the darn door.



And the 6 speed automatic transmission in it, what a pain. The engine had plenty of power. But there was some kind of disconnect between what I want, what the engine is doing and what gear the transmission thinks it should be in. Sometimes, going up a hill or just accelerating mildly hard, you'd push the accelerator for just a bit more power and it would drop what seemed like 3 gears, engine revs up into a major power band and suddenly there is more power and more acceleration they you want so you have to pull off the throttle, which of course makes it up shift.



It did get a bit over 25 mpg by my very rough estimate for the 3000 miles of use, not bad for a large minivan driving with little regard for strict economy.


And, of course, a manual transmission is not an option on a us market grand caravan. So you are screwed :-(

so write the manufacturer [not the dealer] and complain. they don't fix stuff if they don't get feedback.

I live in urop and therefore could not care less about manual transmission availability in the states

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