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Wife was driving her 1996 Mazda Protege' with over 161,000 miles on it. In the past few years she replaced the windshield, all four struts, three engine motor mounts, and both headlight lenses. That thing still ran strong. It still ran even after a woman in a 2009 Jeep Wrangler 4 door ran a stop sign and hit her front passenger side fender. Because of the age and value the car was declared totalled even though the big mechanical parts still ran fine. Just because it needed a new hood, new windshield, new fender, new bumper, and new headlight assembly it was declared totalled. She managed to get a good deal on a 2007 Chrysler Sebring Touring with the 2.4 L DOHC engine. She liked the styling and the price. There's plenty of better cars out there but cars with low resale value is great for us poor folks. It allows us to get a nice car with some factory warranty still in effect at about the same price as a Toyota or Honda that is much much older. We're not worried about resale since we tend to drive our vehicles until they totally die.
My impression so far is this engine has plenty enough power for modest drivers. Don't like the slight buzzing sound it makes on hard acceleration but her mechanic friend said it's normal for this engine which comes from a Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Hyundai agreement. Hyundai has it in the Sonata and Kia has it in the Optima. Plenty of headroom. Trunk is fine for us but my 03 Malibu has a much bigger trunk. Nicely styled rims and headlights. Dashboard layout will take some getting use to. Good amount of airbags for front passengers but none for rear. Only one riding in the back will be her 83 year old father when we take him to the VA on a 4 hour drive round trip. Stereo sounds good and has 6 speakers. We're not the boom boom types. We want clarity. We live on VERY bumpy roads and it is a smooth ride. Dashboard tire pressure monitoring and real time mpg readout will help her fuel economy. Original EPA test showed 24 city and 32 highway.
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