I'll try to be kind and objective here, so don't boo me yet.
BOOO!!!
Damn, I failed.
Any way, I'll do the writing thing and start off good, then bad, then end good. How about that? Yeah? Makes ya'll happy? OK!
I really like a lot about this car. I like that it has some heft (you feel like you're in a tank and therefore feel safe). I like the way it looks, especially in the rear (the front still seems Sebring-ish to me), but the side profile is really nice. The interior looks fantastic and I like the use of colours. UConnect is excellent and the redundant physical controls seem to be a good compromise. I LOVE that it has a 60/40/passthru. I love the large vents - this is a big deal for me...when I'm fricken hot, I want to be cooled (and vice versa). I love that it offers a V6 and AWD (even if it's imperceptible - it's my security bwankee and I simply won't buy a car without AWD). This is a well thought-out, feature-rich offering from Chryi and I think it's decades ahead of their previous offering. Quite frankly, it offers much more than many of its competitors.
...but being a new model from a new partnership, it lacks the refinement, I think, that the decades-old cars do. Hell, look at the Ford F-150 and the Toyota Corolla - re-shaped through the years to get rid of niggle after niggle, keeping the things that owners love. The Sebring offered nothing to be desired, so I'm happy this 200 is ALL new, but small nuances need to be ironed out. I say all of this to be as constructive as possible:
1) The glare on the dashboard. If it's so blatantly visible there ^^^, I can imagine it's worse while driving. Given the plethora of anti-glare plastics out there, it just seems questionable to me to have such evident glare.
2) The centre stack isn't centrally aligned with the uConnect screen! Granted, it gives the passenger a bit more leg room, but it'd drive me bonkers.
3) The sliding cupholders are a GREAT idea...except where do they slide into? (rhetoric) - the centre console storage space...so you really can't use it freely if you store things in every receptacle. Great idea, but the execution needs to be ironed out. This sort of reminds me of Kia's steering select (hell, Ford uses it in the Mustang, too, and I'm sure others do as well) - you have the flexibility, but really you're just going to set it once and never again change it.
4) Those A-Pillars are huge.
The Alpine-branded stereo sounds good, but when the volume was even slightly turned up, we heard a terrible rattle with every bass note - even when the bass was turned down.
Unfortunate, given that Gangstas need their beats!
The new autobox hangs on to gears longer than necessary, and this brings about noticeable lag when you’re driving. To be honest, acceleration can be frightening at times, but not in a good way, as it takes between two and three seconds to downshift into the right gear and get a move on, which can be downright scary if you’re changing lanes and moving into faster traffic.
I would rather have a CVT than this...I think transmissions are having a few too many gears without the need for it.
In summary, I think the new 200 looks the part, has a ton of features, and offers a product that, on the whole, gives the competition a real run for consumer money. However, there is a decided overall lack of 'polish' that needs to be smoothed out to make the 200 a real winner. Great effort, though.
Other than the differences in styling, I couldn't see anything that I could point to that was remarkably better in either car. The assembly was fine, the materials as far as I could see were comparable. This doesn't of course mesh with the critical consensus which seems to be the Golf is akin to a Rolls Phantom in its interior while the Subaru is closer to a Trabant.
Applaud.
