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| Suspension has been tightened; bodykit chunked up |
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To strap the little rocket to the earth, the SRT team have stiffened the springs and dampers, made the front spoiler deeper and swapped the motorised rear plane for a fixed bigger tea-tray wing. The tyres are no bigger than before but they're gummier, and besides they're vast on a normal Crossfire, at 225/40 18 front and 255/35 19 rear. Brakes are physically uprated and the ESP thresholds have been loosened a bit.
Inside, the well-bolstered seats are faced in a mix of leather and Alcantara to keep a better grip on you, and the speedo reads to a comically superfluous 200mph. You're actually limited by the electronics to 158mph.
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| Something from Star Trek, or the Crossfire SRT-6's supercharged engine? |
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But you can get there pretty quickly - Chrysler claims around 5.0sec for the dash to 60mph which isn't at all shabby for an automatic. Yup, there's no manual option, and the shift has Merc's annoying over-ride which isn't anything of the sort. Say you shift down to 3 - what you actually get is a transmission that will still select between 3rd, 2nd and 1st at times of its own choosing. And even the downshifts that you do force come with a delay.
The exhaust belches a dull boom at low revs (the SRT boys says they're working on this), but the soundscape gets better and better with wider throttle and more revs. That's the way a sports car engine should be, and the combined V6 roar and supercharger whine make this one most satisfactory, if never one of the greats. The huge spread of torque makes overtaking a breeze, and you can just catapult out of corners, the vast rear tyres getting it all onto the road with contemptuous ease.
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