The 2024 Dodge Hornet Should Have Been Special

2024 Dodge Hornet R/T PHEV

Price: $64,040 CAD

Colour: Hot Tamale

You know things are grim at a manufacturer when they make a big deal about the fact that their new car is the first all-new offering in more than a decade. Dodge has had a rough go of it in recent years. They’ve limped along for the last decade selling V8 iterations of their various muscle car offerings. Credit where it’s due, they’ve milked that segment for all it’s worth and then some. The time ultimately came however for Dodge to offer something new. Their corporate overlords at Stellantis were looking to add a mid-sized SUV from Alfa Romeo for the North American market so this seemed like a great time to combine the two, save some money and produce a mediocre, poorly engineered, blandly styled 5-seater that nobody really cares about. To add insult to injury, they then decided to tick the EV box by adding a PHEV variant. Sad then that with the 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T PHEV we get an extension of that same lackluster design philosophy. What a disappointment.

The 5-passenger SUV segment leaves the current car customer spoiled for choice. There are so many options in fact that to stand out you had better be damned sure your offering is special. Just to compete it needs to be pretty, feature bold design flourishes, have modern technology that works and give buyers space they can use for hauling their children around. Stellantis must know this of course as they are a global manufacturer of cars and, theoretically, they study a market segment before they sink millions into designing and building a new model for said segment. Curious then that we ended up with the all-new Dodge Hornet. It’s not pretty, it’s just bland looking. You can’t get emotional about the appearance of a vehicle like this. It’s so boring looking you don’t love it or hate it. You don’t even register it should you pass on one on the road (which you won’t, as nobody is buying them). Does the Hornet feature any bold design choices? No, quite the opposite actually. The interior is standard Dodge and offers nothing special. The infotainment system is okay, but that’s not good enough considering what you get elsewhere. The exterior, even in R/T trim, has no special design touches. It’s four doors, a hatch and five seats. That’s it. Does the Hornet feature lots of useable space? No, not even close. The floor is so high in the rear of this thing and the roofline relatively low that you end up with very little cargo room. If you have to take three burly teenaged football players to practice like I do three times a week, you’re going to struggle to get their pads in the back and keep the cargo cover in place. When I say struggle, I mean you’ll fail. There is so little room back there it made me audibly sigh in frustration. Compare this to something like the Honda CR-V and it’s laughable. The CRV give you Costco-sized space in the cabin and a boatload of space in the back and it costs less.

I feel that sometimes carmakers produce vehicles just to tick boxes and comply with expectations and legislation demanding they make certain kinds of cars. The Toyota BZ4X/Subaru Solterra is a great example of this. Nobody asked for a lumpen, half-painted SUV lacking all kinds of inspiration but both company’s felt like they needed an EV SUV so they collaborated on that thing to tick the box and ride out the EV wave while everyone figures out it might not be the revolution they thought it was. The PHEV Hornet feels exactly the same. A well-designed PHEV is a thing of beauty. It gives you the benefits of an EV without all the shortcomings. Volvo makes a great line of PHEV vehicles that work as they should. The other side of that coin are cars like the Hornet PHEV which just doesn’t work. The electric range is miniscule in the real world, takes way too long to charge, won’t self charge and doesn’t even combine for good fuel economy. It leaves you wondering what the point is. Then you realize Dodge doesn’t really care about making a good PHEV, they just need to make a PHEV. This is the result.

At least the 2024 Dodge Hornet PHEV is well priced – no, wait, that’s not true either. To add insult to injury with this car, it’s grossly overpriced. I cannot fathom how they expect people to pay somewhere in the range of a 55-60k CAD (it’s hard to peg down exact list price as Dodge rolls in EV rebates and factory rebates into their list pricing) when, at said price point, there are endless options. This pricing philosophy might explain why you don’t see many Hornets on the road. Of the ones you do see, I have yet to see a PHEV variant.

I truly have no idea what Dodge was thinking when they put the Hornet into production. It misses in every category that matters. This leaves their new offering far behind the rest of the pack. Considering more all-new models must be in the pipeline, I hope they learn something from this experience and pivot accordingly. In the meantime, the bulk of us looking for a 5-passenger PHEV will look anywhere else.

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