Motor Trend SUV of the Year Contender: Dodge Journey

From Motortrend.com - The 2009 Dodge Journey should be a hit. Smallish car-based crossovers like the Journey are all the rage, and this one offers a miserly four-banger, a $20,750 opening price, and an optional third-row seat (V-6s only). Wow features like storage under the front-passenger seat cushion and beneath the second-row footwells, integrated child booster seats, the MyGig stereo/nav system with live Sirius satellite traffic and weather, and (soon) even Internet connectivity in the car should have buyers lining up and editors awarding big points on significance and value. But the journey from drawing board to showroom floor included shortcuts.

Inside, the oddly sloped center console places frequently used audio controls at the bottom near a blunt corner where many drivers rest their knees. And our jury is unimpressed by the sheens and textures of the plastics. Chevy and Ford have seriously upped the ante in this department.

Midsize Avenger sedan underpinnings make the Journey smaller and 500 pounds lighter than a similarly equipped Ford Flex, yet Dodge's aging single-cam 3.5L V-6 returns fuel economy lower than the Flex's by the EPA's reckoning and identical under our lead feet (14.9 mpg). It's also slower through the quarter mile. An elderly four-speed automatic hobbles the 2.4L four-cylinder front-drive version with worse fuel economy than a three-row RAV4 V-6 delivers.

The welterweight Journey should feel lighter on its feet than its middleweight Flex and Chevy Traverse rivals, and while steering feel and maximum lateral grip are slightly better, howling understeer, poor body-motion control, and a tendency to crash over bumps make it feel discombobulated on twisty, undulating pavement.