Travel on cars

Filed under: Tech, Hatchbacks, Chrysler, Dodge

Click on the Caliber for a hig-res gallery of the 2008 Dodge Caliber SRT-4

While the new Dodge Caliber SRT-4 was in the Autoblog Garage, I had a chat with Erich Heushele and Kathy Graham from Chrysler. Erich is the Vehicle Development Supervisor at Chrysler’s in-house tuning group and Kathy is a communications rep for the team. We talked about some of the mechanical changes involved in transforming a Caliber into an SRT-4, including why it doesn’t have all-wheel-drive.

Autoblog: I just have a few questions about some of the things that your team did on the SRT-4 that differ from the standard Caliber. What sort of suspension and brake changes were made? Also, why is there no all-wheel-drive?

Erich Heuschele: Sure, well I will try to see what I can give you. We dropped the front end 28-mm and the rear 22-mm. We actually have shorter dampers on the car so it has more jounce travel. We didn’t just lower the car. We actually got back some of the jounce travel we lost. It has 210-pound per inch springs in the front, 240 in the rear. That’s pretty stiff, and on car like the Caliber and the Patriot, they like stiff springs. The base Caliber is more like a 160 pounds per inch and the old SRT-4 Neon was 175 in the front and 125 in the back. We’ve got 19 by 7 ½ inch cast wheels, 225/45-19 tires. The Goodyear Eagle RS-A or the F1. The RS-A is actually a really kick ass RSA, it’s nearly as capable as the F1 tire.

Find out what else changed and why the SRT-4 is front-wheel-drive after the jump.

Continue reading Autoblog Q&A: Erich Heuschele from SRT answers why the Caliber SRT-4 is FWD