Are they, though? They're just Dodge Neons under the hood. And there were a ton of pt cruisers. I still see them now, 20 something years later. People seemed to take care of them and pass them onto their kids as they got older.

Everything from Chrysler is junk. I worked for several dealers and general used car lots with my auto body shop business. Everything dodge/chrysler/plymouth was cut rate junk since the late 70's and still is. At wholesale auctions, they are the joke cars people only bid on because they are so damn cheap it justifies playing roulette. Everything goes wrong with them.

Like here we are nearly 20 years since I painted and I still remember there is a champagne/charcoal/silver metallic paint that came on Dodge/Chryslers. The color code was 4Q2. There were more unrelated variations under that color code than almost any other at the time. The only one I encountered that was worse was the charcoal metallic used on Chevy/GMC trucks and suburbans. That one has tone variability between yellow, red, and blue where getting it wrong meant remixing the color coat. With 4Q2 it was metallic grain size, tone between blue and yellow, and the flop characteristics (apparent color tone and clarity when viewed from an oblique angle).

I remember many times thinking to myself that someone knew, if you have not figured it out, say "4Q2" out loud and fast... It was freaking personal, all those times I struggled with that color. Those cars were the dead inventory that was ever present on many lots I worked for, and they sat at the mechanics bays for much longer than any of the rest.