Originally Posted by retmil46

Mine's an 05 Sport. Just turned 83K miles a couple nights ago. Same as elchivito reports about his friend's. Easily 35 mpg interstate on a long trip, 25 mpg around town in mixed driving and on my commute to work.

Reason there's so few of them is that the EPA only allowed DC to sell around 15 to 18K of them in 05 and 06 in this country before they had to cut off production.

That VM Motori diesel is an absolute beast - it was originally a marine engine adapted for automotive use. Cast iron block, wet sleeve liners, oil spray jets under the pistons, twin counterbalance shafts, hefty internal parts - for my money, it's built every bit as tough as the OM 603 in my 87 300D.

Haven't had a lick of trouble out of the engine. I've gotten to where I can tell just by the sound, between 5 to 7k miles, when it's about time to change out the oil - start getting a faint clatter out of the lifters. Dump the old oil, run some cheap 30W oil thru it for about 10 minutes to flush out the soot, then fill it up with some good diesel rated oil - back to quiet as a church mouse.

That said, it's been all the cheap-a$$ Chrysler parts surrounding the engine that have given me grief - other than the engine, we're talking bean counter engineering taken to the extreme. It'd take me the better part of a day to sit here and list all the stuff it's been necessary to replace or modify to make this thing into a reliable daily driver.

I've said it many times before - sticking this diesel engine, in a Chrysler vehicle of that era and "quality", was like sticking the Hope Diamond up a goat's a$$.