Researching a car is a study in being biased. Obviously, readers of this site may feel we show a little favoritism to Chrysler products. But when you Google reviews of cars, results will come back with thousands of lovers/haters of every car possible. It’s almost impossible to get a real life, unbiased review of a vehicle. Over the holiday, two Chryslerpedia authors took a 1200 mile round trip from North East Ohio to Montreal, Canada in a 2008 PT – and for better or worse we have observations from this trip.

9 am – Leaving Ohio

A representative from our local rental car company near Cleveland rolls up in a 2008 PT Cruiser. First thought – S**t, we have a 10+ hour drive across a large chunk of North America during winter in an American automobile. Honestly, we weren’t thrilled, as our previous rental from this company was a Toyota.

The vehicle had roughly 31000 miles on it, which in rental years is 70000. And that is what makes this a real life road test – not using one of those right off the assembly line models. This car has been used and abused. Since the journey was taking us into the heart of frozen French Canada, these travelers were skeptical.

Chrysler’s been bashed for their lack of updates to the PT’s interior. When you sit in one it becomes apparent why the American automotive industry is suffering. The car looks plastic, and much of the dashboard is. And personally this writer cannot get over the emerging trend in placing automatic window controls on the center counsel. It’s like the early 80’s Firebirds (think Knight Rider) – which had window switches on the panel between both front seats. Is that for functionality? Or is it because the Cruiser’s doors feel so thin Chrysler engineers couldn’t fit a panel on them?

On into Canada!

After 6+ hours on US roads it’s time to pay attention to the “KM” part of the speedometer. Now we get into the real challenge of driving a used car in tough weather. It was about 7 degrees-F that evening with a wind chill dropping way past 0. By this time the car was very warn, comfortable, and responding well to abused highways. The ride wasn’t as bumpy as we expected, although the low fuel indicator seemed to come on when we still had a fair amount of gasoline left, making us nervous to be stranded in the middle of 401 East in Ontario during the cold Canadian night. After 600 miles one way we only needed to fill the tank twice.

10 hours later (give or take 30 minutes for a Denny’s pit-stop in Angola) and we go from testing highway to city driving with the PT. And what a city to drive in! Montreal is a gorgeous, classy city, but its roads and traffic leave much to be desired. Our rental cruised along these ice covered streets with some struggle, but that was mostly because of its light weight and the fact that its front tires were balling (which we didn’t notice before leaving Ohio.) There were some issues getting up iced hills because of this. What what’s the next step? A cold start after 5 days because we parked the PT for almost a week to go party!

Returning to the States

After sitting for several days during freezing nights and a small snow storm we were curious as to how easily our PT Cruiser would restart. Luckily it was as if we left the vehicle off for only five minutes. Although, it did take a good 10 minutes for the interior to warm up.

Our drive back was a bit more of a challenge, as we hit freezing rain around Buffalo. Again, the car plowed through Upstate NY weather pretty well, though again high winds were a factor in tossing the small ride around. After 1200 miles the Cruiser was revving close to the 3000 RPMs, but as it was a rental who knows the last time it was serviced. We were also at an average speed of 75 MPH. In all honesty our PT rental performed slightly better than expected. There are a lot of little things to pick at with this particular make, but in the end we drove around half of the Great Lakes and into Southern Canada without any major hassle.