And that the inner trunklid has no padding rings an unfortunate note of cheapness every time you open the trunk. The body-panel gaps around the decklid make us sad. For example, our own Mike Austin had to finish the assembly of our test car by clipping the rear interior door panels into place. It has now bested every significant entry in its class. This story would have been more interesting to write had the Focus not won again. But there’s no hiding the additional weight at the test track, where the Dart trailed the Focus by a half-second to 60 mph. When all 184 pound-feet of torque are working, you can forget that the Dart carries an additional 301 pounds of mass compared with the Focus. Get used to downshifting the ropey shifter. At 30.1 seconds, the Dart requires more than double the time it takes the Focus to complete the same feat. Its painfully slow 30-to-50-mph top-gear acceleration tells the tale. Around town, you will catch this little mill snoozing, and it takes forever to rouse it. This is not a powertrain that allows its operator to be lazy. The Dart’s engine is an on/off power switch. And despite a longer wheelbase and a larger interior volume than the Focus’s, the rear quarters of the Dart were deemed less comfortable because of low, unsupportive seat bottoms.Īnd while the Dart’s optional turbocharged 1.4-liter four (a $1300 option) matches the output of the Focus’s naturally aspirated 2.0-liter four, the two have vastly different deliveries. A ragged line between matte and gloss portions of the instrument panel will look familiar to house painters too lazy to properly apply masking tape. Does it carry the beguiling scent of Eau de Flying J Truck Stop? No, but it does feel cheap. Our mid-level Rallye test car for this go-round was filled with dull gray fittings that Dodge calls “diesel gray.” We’re not sure what the company is aiming for with that name. In our earlier exposures to the car, Dodge made sure to deliver Limited versions with upgraded interiors in black, which tends to hide some cost cutting. We’ve come to expect dynamic competence in this segment, along with decent passenger accommodations, high-tech features, decent fuel efficiency, and an overall lack of cheapness. This, and a general feeling of bigness serve to mask the Dart’s handling precision. Its only real dynamic fault is its relatively lackluster turn-in. That the Dart accomplishes this while returning a more comfortable ride than the Focus indicates that Dodge’s suspension-tuning kung fu is strong, indeed. We were not prepared for the fluid way in which this sedan moves the way it gently loads up its outside tires the way it effortlessly slices a corner like a boning knife through tuna. But there it was poking its crosshair schnoz into the Focus’s rear bumper. Maybe it is the Dodge’s overly voluptuous, Barney-the-dinosaur hips or maybe it is just the damage done to Dodge’s reputation by the Caliber, but we didn’t expect the Dart to keep up with the Focus on our route through the dales. The Dodge Dart has to be the least likely good-handling car on the American market.

We’re talking some heavy cross-cultural stuff here. A stretch, you say? Yeah, well would you believe that the real Hockenheim ring hosts an annual NitrOlympX event with Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars wearing pink ’59 Cadillac–style bodies running the quarter-mile? It’s true.

Instead, we headed for our own little “Hockingheim ring” of snaky public roads in the southern Ohio Hocking Hills.

We didn’t choose Ohio for its interminable, flat expressways, although we made ample use of those. With our imported British photographer in tow, we headed to Ohio, where this slight young man was continually shocked at the size of the American human and the propensity of the males of the species to wear unkempt beards.

Generally speaking, these two are a perfect match. Each pumps out 160 peak horsepower, carries 13 cubic feet of cargo, circles the skidpad at 0.86 g, and negotiates our slalom at 42.2 mph. Both the Dart Rallye and the Focus SE start below $20,000, and our examples pushed into the low 20s.

Dodge dart rallye