Instrumented Test
Like a single-issue candidate, the Chrysler 200 convertible has stumped on one appeal. In the car’s case, it’s that the top goes down. Whether you opt for the conventional ragtop or the extra-cost foldable steel roof, the 200 provides an affordable open-air motoring experience for up to four adults, a commendable position that Chrysler is practically alone in offering. However, once you look beyond that point—say, once the sky clouds over—the rest of its agenda has proven distressing. Styling? Performance? Value? The rent is, indeed, too damn high.
Yet the 200 has campaigned on, playing to its snowbird base, seemingly content that the harshest criticism abated once it abandoned the Sebring nameplate for a numeric nom de plume and tidied up its appearance in 2011. Now Chrysler gives us the automotive equivalent of an October surprise, overhauling the 200 convertible’s suspension for 2013.
Revised with parts and tuning developed for the mostly badge-engineered Lancia Flavia, the 200’s handling is no longer spastic and clumsy. The biggest changes are reserved for the softtop model and include a front strut suspension with a new rebound spring and 12-percent-stiffer main springs, 23-percent-stiffer rear coils, a thicker front anti-roll bar (increased from 25 mm to 27), and revised damping all around. Chrysler says this firmer suspension calibration would have been too harsh in the retractable-hardtop model, which does at least benefit from a revised steering rack and rear toe link that have been deployed across the board. The whole package now feels well sorted. Steering effort is increased, feedback is improved, and body motions are much better controlled. The radical torque steer in 283-hp V-6 models like the one tested here has even been muted in everyday driving, in part by altering the transmission shift schedule.
It’s a momentous change, as if our candidate switched parties midstream. Yet we’re still talking about a 4058-pound front-driver, a car with plenty of understeer and spongy brakes. In most ways, the 200 convertible hews to its fundamentals—comfy cruising, easygoing handling—as fiercely as ever. And with the base V-6 car wearing an MSRP of $29,890, it’s not even a sun lover’s bargain compared with similarly priced and more engaging droptops such as the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, puny pony-car back seats notwithstanding.
But Chrysler says its convertibles have their own loyal following, and even if many of the 20,000 or so 200 convertibles sold each year are destined for Florida rental-car fleets, that’s an opportunity to impress customers unfamiliar with the brand. But now in its sixth model year after initially launching as the Sebring—a point in their life cycles when most vehicles are doing a slow fade to redesign or replacement—the 200 convertible finally has a multipoint platform on which to campaign.
