LEAKED: New 2017 Chrysler Town and Country (Pacifica) Minivan
Ahead of the official release at Detroit’s North American International Auto Show, pictures of the new Chrysler Town and Country have been circulating. Supposedly it will be renamed Pacifica, an odd choice considering what a commercial flop the original was.
The blacked out rear backlight is an interesting touch while the nose shares the new Chrysler corporate look with the 200 sedan.
Jalopnik has interior and press photos:
Unfortunately, there is a huge reason that I and many others would never buy this van.
This van has the most obnoxious, overactive, overpowered, horrible blindspot warning radar I have ever seen in any car. Another couple of FCA products, the Fiat 500X and its POS Jeep equivalent, tie for second place. While most of the Euro companies, along with GM, have been changing their systems, FCA has been particularly tone deaf in their responses to complaints about this on their vehicles.
Chrysler takes the tone that you are attacking their vehicles for having this safety feature, even if you make it clear that you are not. Their responses to complaints are typically worded with palpable hostility, including phrases like “valuable safety feature” and “most drivers appreciate”, clearly trying to place the complainer as being on the wrong side of reason.
It’s really simply to eliminate the radar detector false alarm on a blind spot sensor system. There are three ways to do it, use a technology other than radar (TV camera, infrared, ultrasonic/sonar), use short pulses at a random and constantly changing frequency, or just stay off of the 24 GHz K band. The second two options are easy, as the sensors are self contained units that don’t send raw data back to the car’s systems. There’s a lot of room in the 80 and 90 GHz band, which is sort of pre-allocated for these functions.
As someone who us not unique in having a radar detector on every car, and not cheapos (Cobra, Uniden) that are prone to false alarms, I feel like I am seeing a big chunk of the market that they are missing or alienating.