Jason on Cars

This is the Chrysler Pacifica. Or, the MiniVan of Dreams. It’s a four-door van with several forward-thinking features. It’s got a power-lift gate. Normal windows for the rear passengers to roll down. A center console between the backseats. About a hundred different seat configurations (some up, some down, some hidden or taken out), and a multi-media mavens dream.

Featuring the UConnect, it allows you to speak commands to the car without taking your hands or eyes off the wheel/road. It sounds fantastic, but I never got it to work (although, I barely gave it the college try, and didn’t read the manual… But I stick by my guns that I shouldn’t have had to.). Did I mention forward-thinking features? Well, it also has the most backwards thinking feature I’ve seen in a long time. Instead of putting the navigation and rear-camera display in the center dash like everyone else in the world, they put it inside the instrument cluster. This makes it almost impossible to look at while backing up (when you’d actually need to use a rear-mounted camera), and extra impossible to use when you’re turning the car while backing up, as your arms and hands and steering wheel all server as obstacles to look past. If you’re going to go through the trouble of putting in these features (camera and nav), please put them somewhere where I can see them, and my passengers can view them. It’s great to have my co-pilot watching the navigation and telling me what to expect, but when it’s out of their view, and ultimately, out of mine, it’s worthless.

By the way, that photo above? DEFINITELY a ’simulation.’ The video doesn’t look anywhere near that clean.