The Easy Life
Don't get me wrong, this is no cutesy little city car that's a cinch to park in cramped downtown parallel parking spots. This 2006 Dodge
Magnum is a wagon. An unashamed, unabashedly proud wagon. If you can't fit everything you bought at Ikea for that bedroom reno in back, you need to go back to wagon-packing school. If you can't fit your family of five with room to lounge, then you might want to consider training them to be an offensive line for the Steelers.
Now there's more to this car than just being big, but that was the overwhelming initial impression it made on me. Huge, even. And while it's big in exterior dimensions, at over five metres long, which is almost sixteen and a half feet, and with that over 2,000 litres of storage capacity available, it's even bigger in presence, with even the base model I was driving stretching from the massive vertical grille straight past its broad shoulders back to the rear bumper and lower front valance. The Magnum sports the most intimidating grille in the industry,
short of an International highway truck bearing down on you (or maybe a Hummer, but then again, neither of those is within same tax bracket or even area code).
The rest of the car seems to follow naturally from the overbearing grille: big headlights, sleek, narrowing windows (for proper effect make sure to order the tinted windows - pricey at $475, but I just can't picture it with clear glass), a high metal-to-glass ratio, a tapering roofline and canted rear windshield that all screams badass as it flies by you. Considering this vehicle was a base model with base steel wheels, I was very impressed with the fact that Dodge fits it with beefy 17-inch all season tires, and the wheel covers are some of the nicest I've ever seen, playing off the pattern of the steel rim to provide a bit of unexpected flair for even the basic-needs shoppers among us.
Don't get me wrong, this is no cutesy little city car that's a cinch to park in cramped downtown parallel parking spots. This 2006 Dodge
 |
| The Dodge Magnum is a wagon. An unashamed, unabashedly proud wagon. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
Now there's more to this car than just being big, but that was the overwhelming initial impression it made on me. Huge, even. And while it's big in exterior dimensions, at over five metres long, which is almost sixteen and a half feet, and with that over 2,000 litres of storage capacity available, it's even bigger in presence, with even the base model I was driving stretching from the massive vertical grille straight past its broad shoulders back to the rear bumper and lower front valance. The Magnum sports the most intimidating grille in the industry,
 |
| The Magnum sports the most intimidating grille in the industry. (Photo: Jonathan Yarkony, Canadian Auto Press) |
The rest of the car seems to follow naturally from the overbearing grille: big headlights, sleek, narrowing windows (for proper effect make sure to order the tinted windows - pricey at $475, but I just can't picture it with clear glass), a high metal-to-glass ratio, a tapering roofline and canted rear windshield that all screams badass as it flies by you. Considering this vehicle was a base model with base steel wheels, I was very impressed with the fact that Dodge fits it with beefy 17-inch all season tires, and the wheel covers are some of the nicest I've ever seen, playing off the pattern of the steel rim to provide a bit of unexpected flair for even the basic-needs shoppers among us.