Gadgetory

the Dodge Durango used to be this body-on-frame truck like SUV that no one got terribly excited about this one there was a whole different story no longer truck frame unibody now but it is a sibling of the highly acclaimed Jeep Grand Cherokee that gives us reason enough to get intrigued let's try the 2014 dodge durango limited with a Hemi and check the tech now being a sibling of the Grand Cherokee we expect nice ride quality and we've got it this is not a truck like riding vehicle even though it's in the volume you'd expect to be a truck some story about the platform not only is it shared with the Grand Cherokee it actually dates back to the bad marriage of Daimler Chrysler therefore this is basically the same underpinnings as a Mercedes GL if you want to look for some nice pedigree and as we're going to see when we return to the road later the big headline here is both a Hemi engine that we've optioned up front and a new 8-speed automatic right behind it inside a thoroughly modern cabin a lot of tech and a lot of LCDs this is something new here we have a seven-inch LCD for most but not all of our instrument panel it's a whole bunch of information screens plus a digital or analog speedometer and then around it you still have physical gauges now in the center you've got the 8.4 inch square LCD one of the biggest and also one of the more square in the industry or what else does rectangular Dodge and Chrysler kind of go in equal directions navigation is here of course that is optional however it doesn't cost much those will see at the very end of the piece here and it's one of the best rated for simplicity great big buttons easy to get around if you can't figure this one out you can't figure out anything 3d mode I think is new for this year find nearest target there are multiple entries for target for nine for target now do you want yes starting route guidance so look how simple that is by one gulp and freeform brand or category search as well as address you just hit this thing and talk to it there are more or less at the cutting edge of doing good simple voice commander all your media choices are here unfortunately it's a hot mess how they spread them around it's old-school thinking am FM HD of those and Sirius XM on one screen media as if radio is not a medium is on another screen that includes your a/v Jack's in the back SD card down here bluetooth streaming of course an optical disc which is optional that's interesting here in the cabin you don't get that without paying a separate fee and USB to pick up thumb drives or our iPod iPod iPhone interface of course is important it looks like this pretty good use of meta tag space there with a screen this big do they really have to run the title off the side that could have been formatted better so I don't need to see scrolling it's one of the things that the government is trying to push into interfaces now is less scrolling so you can glance once and get back to the road not watch this thing do this now we have the audio upgrade here nine speakers one of those is a sub and 506 watts of output but it's nothing crazy fancy with all kinds of spacial soundstage modifications and surround processing it's pretty straightforward and then over here on the far right you've got your apps there's more media in there AHA as a form of media pandora is a form of media iHeartRadio is media so is slacker I do not like these little triple estates what they're doing in cars still the smarter car makers are putting everything more or less together under media now this is a press car so it's a Jezebel everyone's used it at least once a little hard for us to get these apps working because they just won't I think it's a registration issue so I'm not going to knock the car for that but no matter what I do get in this weird loop of it initializing the app and then telling me I've got to launch another app on my phone called you connect access and I do that and it keeps telling me to do that again again I think it's because this car has been around the block a few times so I'm not going to dock them on that but if that's the case in general we've got a bug you've also got a Wi-Fi hotspot technology in this car parental controls as you can see there's a lot of things going on here that's why media should come out Yelp is built-in it does not require tethering the other apps do see that 3G logo down there there's an early effort at some 3G technology built into this car and Yelp of course appears to be voice-only so let's see how that works Yelp search after the beep say something like carwash or pizza in Chicago Car Wash in San Rafael California to make a phone call press the phone pick up button do you want me to press the phone button for you no it's not what I asked please try again Pizza in San Francisco do you want me to press the phone button for you no canceled pizza in San Francisco sorry I missed that Pizza in San Francisco to make a phone call press the phone pick up button do you want me to press the phone button for do no I want you to go to hell this has been going on for the three days I've had this car this Yelp app and mostly apps on here seem dumb as a post so I'm disappointed by that let's move on more successfully I hope to the drive controls real simple and clean you've got a rotary transmission control right here Park reverse neutral Drive boom that's it there's no sport mode you have to get into or anything like that no suspension settings per se but you do have an eco mode down here and this is going to primarily effect cylinder deactivation you'll run on eight or four cylinders when that's enabled when it's disabled you're going to run on eight all the time and of course you have the trademark back of the wheel Chrysler controls so not just these buttons but these ones back here you can't see there's a button in the middle and there's an up and down rocker around it on both sides for volume seek source mode things like that takes a little getting used to because they're not labeled obviously in back there's an optional rear seat entertainment system that is notable for its blu-ray ability and dual HDMI inputs but otherwise it's a common dual nine-inch headrest rig that isn't very interesting the seat and steering wheel heaters actually do double duty warming you or making pop-tarts yes they get that hot now under the hood on our car we've optioned up the Hemi the 5.7 liter v8 base on this guy is going to be a Pentastar v-6 but that's another story numbers on this guy are three hundred and sixty horse 390 foot pounds of torque it's a Torquay beast base is out through an 8-speed automatic and rear-wheel drive you can also option up all-wheel drive same gearbox the new 8-speed automatic from ZF it's a real nice transmission 50 100 pounds-plus on this i all hemming and four-wheel-drive dup you're going to get 18 25 mpg though that's pretty good thank that cylinder deactivation for part of that and zero to 60 if you really care on this vehicle is six point six seconds with the big engine a full second faster than the v6 let's see how it all comes together on the road okay on the road I'm gonna kick this thing into manual mode so I can really get that Hemi working unless you can pick that up or not but there's a nice Hemi growl in there so exhaust system is there but not intrusive just like it should be the paddle shifting is pretty quick for a vehicle of this type and price I wish there was a sport mode because you've got to either get into manual mode here or go into an automatic mode that is just too sleepy the kick down on the automatic mode is just numb so I'm in here shifting a lot which I'd rather not be to be honest suspensions to wallowing for my tastes in fact people were in this car we were driving around they kept grabbing first stuff which is never a good sign because the thing feels pretty tippy there is no sports suspension on the limited the r/t the next one up you can get a sports suspension it also has greater towing rating it's 7400 pounds towing on the r/t 6200 on this guy but overall the driving experience is it's very American let's face it it's large its powerful its isolated from the road and pretty numb this is no Cayenne killer outward visibility is pretty bad to the rear quarters I mean that's a huge sale panel back there I wouldn't even call it a seat pillar it's just a cave just keep going forward luckily this backup camera is large and it is standard but it doesn't help you when you're in forward motion for that we do have passive blind spot and cross traffic alert technology on this guys is also available a forward collision alert with adaptive cruise control let's price our Durango limited which is pretty close to the top it's thirty seven thousand or so with destination charge but we're not seeing that style yet we're not even this style you want to add that Hemi as twenty eight hundred dollars more another twenty four hundred for all wheel drive should that matter 2395 for the premium group that brings you a lot of CNET style stuff including the upgraded audio navigation system power liftgate these bigger fancier wheels and tires and the power sunroof now here's the kicker if you want a CD drive to go with that that's 450 bucks extra they're basically telling you you don't the rear seat entertainment system is impressive technically with blu-ray and HDMI and dual nine inch screens but for two thousand dollars I'd pass on that all day and get the kids a couple tablets now I'm not sure the world needs another Grand Cherokee but in the Dodge aficionado circles this is your huckleberry it's a nicely put together vehicle real solid it does the big things right in terms of tech but have some issues around the fringe on the fine details