Lets see, i bought my intrepid in 2000. It had 60K miles on it which was the main motivator for me buying it. I drove it until early 2004 when my wife decided to shorten it dramatically by running it into the back of a stalled car on the expressway. The only obvious flaw at the time of purchase was the passenger airbag cover seemed to be curling up due to sun exposer.
I had some transmission problems in the beginning. It started dropping into "limp" mode which is when the tranny moves to first gear and will not up shift because it senses a problem. Trips to the dealer revealed some corrosion on the electrical harness. Cleaning this myself cleared up the problem for a while but it eventually came back. Another trip to the dealer allowed us to pin it down to the transmission controller. $350 later and the problem was solved completely.
Later research revealed that neglecting to use the correct transmission fluid in these Chrysler products can actually cause the tranny to act broken. This gives me pause when i think of all the friends i knew that had transmission rebuilds at $2k a pop when its possible that a transmission service could have solved the problem.
the only other problems i saw where as follows
1) horn stopped working(fixed with a $12 relay replacement
2) cruise control stopped working(never figured it out)
3) clear coat started to fade
4) CV joint started to have problems.
These problems started happening much later at 100K miles. The cruise never got fixed. The clear coat started to fade off leaving a dull white milky area on the hood and various other spots. Very unattractive. And the front end was making a noise that i thought was the CV joint on the front right. I was going to replace that myself before my wife creamed it.
Interesting thing was that that passenger side airbag did deploy but the drivers side didn't. She did only impact the front right corner of the car though. Seems like it should have deployed though.
In any case, these cars of super cheap and the handle great in the snow. For the value, a great car.
Amount Paid (US$): 6000
Condition: Used
Model Year: 1994
