The Dodge Caliber wasn’t an especially good car. Crudely finished, generally unrefined, and frequently hobbled by a continuously variable transmission of questionable reliability, it often finished at or near the bottom of comparison tests back in 2007. A Honda Fit offered better space utilization and fuel economy, a Volkswagen Rabbit boasted far nicer materials, and the original Nissan Versa was way better than people remember. What the Caliber did have, however, was gimmicks galore. We’ve already touched on its can cooler and iPod dock, but it’s about time I wrote about the gimmick everyone remembers: Swing-down liftgate speakers that let you be a little obnoxious.
To understand Dodge’s motivation, we need to take a look back at the tech landscape of the time. Although Bluetooth did support music streaming in 2007, the sort of Bluetooth audio we know today hadn’t been out for long. While early versions of Bluetooth supported mono audio transfer, the A2DP stereo audio streaming profile itself didn’t launch until 2003, and it took companies a while to integrate it into products. Niche audio company Thodio claims to be the first to offer a portable stereo Bluetooth speaker back in 2007, right around the time the Caliber debuted. Needless to say, you probably weren’t bringing one of those to a bush party or tailgating event.
However, sometimes you still want to get the tunes pumping, and many battery-powered portable speakers of the 2000s kinda sucked. They frequently employed tiny drivers with limited bass, offered short rechargeable battery life or required a supply of alkaline batteries, and boomboxes offering decent sound quality were fairly heavy and bulky. Wouldn’t it be nice if something like that were already built into the back of a car?
Indeed, that’s what Dodge’s liftgate speakers promised. Officially called MusicGate, this swing-down assembly included two amplified 3.5-inch speakers augmented by a subwoofer in the cargo area. It was all part of a nine-speaker Boston Acoustics sound system claiming a nominal 458 watts. The theory was you’d roll up to wherever tunes were needed, flick the key into accessory mode, pop the hatch, and the liftgate speakers would provide directional sound towards the main party area.
The Caliber wasn’t the only Chrysler product to offer the MusicGate, with its Jeep Patriot and Jeep Compass platform-mates also adopting the optional swing-down speakers. Spreading a feature across multiple model lines is a solid way of keeping costs reasonably low, and no matter what vehicle the system was installed in, the MusicGate was a often highlight of reviews. As Motor Trend wrote:
The gigantic subwoofer in the cargo area is cool, but it takes up lots of cargo space and doesn’t sound all that impressive. The very large speakers in the rear doors and the dropdown speakers in the liftgate are pretty cool, too, even if they are typical Chrysler gimmicks.
Dodge’s swing-down speakers worked as a concept, but the technology wasn’t quite there to give it legs yet. See, outside of a bush party or a tailgating event, not being able to take the speakers with you was a limitation. In hindsight, this was a good thing because nobody would park their Caliber, Patriot or Compass in the middle of a public park and subject everyone to Mack Maine’s morally objectionable verse on Young Money posse cut “Every Girl,” but it meant the feature was less useful than it could’ve been. At the same time, portable Bluetooth speakers were really starting to take off in the 2010s. Better units used built-in digital signal processing and passive radiators to get the most out of relatively small drivers, and the result was often sufficient thump in an object the size of a small submarine sandwich.
But it’s not like automakers completely gave up on letting you bring your tunes slightly outside your car. General Motors offers an option in half-ton trucks for a Kicker boombox built into the tailgate, for cranking out some Bob Seger on the job site or annoying everyone at your local sports team’s tailgating party with the worst of Florida Georgia Line. Audio quality isn’t great, but it’s something.
The real leap forward came near the turn of the 2020s, when automakers started letting you take your tunes from the car to wherever. In 2019, Jeep launched the Gladiator with an available Bluetooth speaker that stows and charges behind the rear seat. It was a slightly pricey option, but for those looking to get outdoors, it sure beat having to pack and charge a separate Bluetooth speaker. Then, in 2024, Toyota took things a step further with the new Tacoma’s available JBL audio system. The center channel speaker in the dashboard is a removable Bluetooth speaker all on its own, adding a useful feature without wasting space.
Some 14 years after the last Caliber rolled off the production line in Belvidere, Illinois, it’s time we finally admit without guilt or shame that the MusicGate was pretty neat. Could it contribute to antisociality? Sure. Did it offer objectively great sound quality? Not quite. But it was a fun gimmick, and in an age of cookie-cutter features, it’s nice to have a gimmick every now and then.
Top graphic images: Dodge
Scandalous!
The Old Man had one of these, fully loaded with something like eight grand on the hood to get him to buy it just as Chrysler was headed for bankruptcy. He was so proud of it, but wouldn’t actually make use of the gimmicky features. I did like the swing down speakers, but they felt like they were held on to the gate with a strip of thick saran-wrap. I think they were used one time while tailgating before a NASCAR truck race over in Newton.
And the drink holder heater/cooler? I recall that not working particularly well either. It sort of worked, and could have been a lot cooler, but then it likely wouldn’t have been attached to an ’08 Caliber.
Another thing I remember was how while riding in it and going around a corner, when the accelerator was applied the automatic transmission would feel like it disengaged, would make a whir-Whir-whir noise and then clunk back into gear. Every time. Confidence inspiring it was not. I thought “how the hell can this only have 5,000 miles on it and make these noises?”
Worse than all of that though were the damn door-locks. The locks themselves worked fine, but the holes punched through the Snap-Tite grade plastic door panels had no bezels and still had actual little bits of stringy plastic hanging out. It wasn’t a “fit and finish” issue. It was literally sort-of-fits without finish.
The Old Man claimed he loved the thing, but the two-year ownership before first offering it to me for purchase at a discount (hard no) and then trading it off on a Pontiac Vibe (one of his few non-Mopar purchases) said otherwise.
Calibers had CVTs, so I’m not sure what would be clunking in and out of gear.
That made it even more concerning as it may have actually been something else in the front end. I only drove it a couple of times and “clunk” may not be the best word – maybe something between a “thud”, “clunk”, and “ooff”. I wasn’t super loud, but always had the same noise/feel coming out of a corner and felt to me like it was going from drive to neutral back to drive. I could hear/feel it as a passenger as well.
Granted, that was the first CVT I ever had experience with, but I don’t think it was supposed to sound or feel that way.
We had an 07 Avenger with the can cooler, and I made the mistake of forgetting there was soda in there. Summer heat and a hard turn right after getting in resulted in a surprising explosion from the dash!
The heater stopped working on the passenger side and we couldn’t figure out how to remove the heater core without also pulling the engine since it was on the firewall tucked behind the V6. (It was an R/T). Traded it in for a Subaru for peanuts in 2015.
I remember an acquaintance of mine got one of these new from his parents in high school. My only memory of it was when he said he preferred driving automatics because you “just stick it in D and go” then promptly drove over the parking block and instead of recognizing his error and reversing he doubled down and scraped the absolute shit out of the undercarriage.
The Caliber is just a cool car man. As much as people hate on Mercedes era Chrysler products, I drive one, and it’s been just fine for my whole life. The Caliber was more interesting than whatever Toyota or Honda offered at the time, and while suffering from quality issues, it was a cheap car. I’d love to own a Caliber R/T or SRT-4.
<cracks skull on MusicGate for the 15,704th time whilst unloading groceries from Dodge Caliber>
“Well, that was money well spent,” I grumbled as the dropped carton of milk lapped out of it’s now-split seam. “I can’t believe I ever thought this stupid thing was cool.”
It was a pretty frequent occurrence, a remorse that could only have come from owning a mid-aughts Chrysler product.
The most amazing thing about the Dodge Calibre, is that they sold over six thousand of them in the UK!
I guess they must have sold them very cheap.
It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to see them around. There was one on the walk between my old flat and the little cathedral I’d go to for church, and it was always a joy to see it around. Funnily enough, about the same distance in the opposite direction was a Genesis G70 Shooting Brake…. a car that I’m sure is somehow even rarer. That entire neighbourhood was an interesting spot for cars, looking back.
As a boring person who can’t dance and has no friends, I take the idea of this personally.
One of the (many) issues with crap like the Caliber, is that a feature like this would be promoted as a clever design choice to make life with a substandard product more pleasant (cheap AND cheerful) but then practically none of them were actually equipped with any of the fun features. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve never actually seen a Caliber with these equipped. I’m sure they were locked behind a hideously expensive option package.
This is the sort of thing Porsche does, and they’re allowed because their customers don’t seem to give a shit about spending hideous amounts of money. This sort of strategy used against Cerberus era Chrysler customers just meant that only the shittiest, most featureless and sad versions of the Caliber were sold, and basically doomed the product of earning any future sales based off it’s interesting features. Which is stupid.
The thing with Porsche, is that if you don’t want to spend ‘hideous amounts’ of money on a Porsche, you can just spend less money on a second-hand one, and still get basically the same vehicle.
Crank up the Caliber and sing it with me now:
“One night and one more time
Thanks for the memories
Even though they weren’t so great…”
A friend had a Jeep Patriot for a while. Really, the biggest bummer with these was that the latch was plastic and would break over time with repeatedly opening and closing the hatch.
At that point, closing it required one to do it from the side, pushing the speakers into the flat position and then quickly withdrawing your hand and slamming the door the rest of the way, because you couldn’t close the hatch if they were fully hanging down.
Still, conceptually I can absolutely get the appeal.
>closing it required one to do it from the side, pushing the speakers into the flat position and then quickly withdrawing your hand and slamming the door the rest of the way, because you couldn’t close the hatch if they were fully hanging down
Classic Chryslercorp ownership experience!
The vehicle truly gaslit said friend. They still loved it in spite of its many issues and mourned its eventual loss (because their parent didn’t get some major recall work done while it would’ve been covered, and the part failed. Not exactly sure what offhand).
Even now they got a detailed pencil drawing of it from Etsy as a gift and have it proudly on display, all while driving a nice 2018 Camry these days.
A neat gimmick for sure. And the fact they built an SRT-4 version of the Caliber is also my kind of crazy, even if they sold like what, 4? A shame the car overall was so poorly executed (but Chrysler gonna Chrysler, especially Cerberus era) because honestly the idea, that small cars could just get taller and sell better to Americans, was about to be hit out of the park by the Kia Soul, so it wasn’t a bad concept.
I was going to say the same thing. Transmission issues aside, one of the biggest turn offs is the styling – it appealed to almost no one. If you wanted an SUV, you didn’t want a tiny one; if you wanted a hatchback, you didn’t want one that looked ridiculous. I suspect if it were normally proportioned and sleeker, it would have plenty of fans here.
Feels like a shot at the success of the Vibe/Matrix twins. Just maybe they should have spent more money aiming it. There’s a reason I haven’t seen one of these in a long time.
It’s a shame because especially in SRT form it represents an almost abandoned segment that I would like more and better options in – if they weren’t guaranteed to want $48,000 for it now.
I don’t necessarily think the styling was the issue. It looks like a photo-Crosstrek, and wasn’t so far ahead of its that customers weren’t ready for it. I think it was DaimlerChrysler’s execution.
That said, Subaru customers are willing to tolerate increasingly ugly vehicles in a way that no other automaker can get away with, so maybe it *was* the styling..?
You raise a good point with the Crosstrek. I’ve always thought Subaru is largely trading on an (outdated at this point) reputation for durability + right for a lot of people lifestyle signaling, and maybe not getting that right was part of the Caliber’s failure?
Nobody of buying age at that point had memories of really well-made Chrysler vehicles, and it’s hard to say what the style was screaming about their lives (inset joke here).
I think the Caliber’s main issue was that it was a little too far ahead of the curve. Subaru Outbacks were still pretty fringe at the time. None of the other compacts were lifted. Back at the time, I got 2 of these as rental cars, and thought they were perfectly cromulent offerings. The operation of the CVT felt a little strange, but CVTs hadn’t been around long enough yet to get a poor reputation for longevity. People always talk about the crappy interior, but the reality is that the Civic, Corolla, Sentra, Focus, Cobalt of the time also had really cheap interiors.
Did we all forget the gen2 Ridgeline’s gimmick of the entire plastic bed being a resonator for an external speaker?
As my London-based friend would say, “You wot?”
My sister’s caliber had this. Worked well at the beach. She did drain the battery more than 1 time with it though
As annoying as that would be, it does make for a good story over the long haul.
They are cool like a mullet hair cut. All party out back, but unless you produce photographic proof, no one will admit they ever had one!
My soon-to-be-3-year-old nephew has a mullet. He is mixed-race (white, Choctaw and S. Korean), so his hair is an interesting texture, but I don’t think it will be as cute when he gets older.
I bet that is adorable! Big hair is amazing on kiddos.
It’s kind of funny. I think it’s fun for the kids, maybe largely because it is presented as fun, and fun for the parents, because they get to play dress-up doll with a style they’re afraid to wear but secretly want to.
It definitely is adorable right now. It’s less adorable when they become teenagers and it morphs into the Oklahoma Farm Boy haircut, which is the curly mullet underneath an Ariat mesh cap.
I have a hard time trying to imagine prospective buyer groups for the Caliber outside of older folks that just really wished that Chrysler still built the PT Cruiser instead.
I have a friend in Switzerland that loves all things America, he fell into the marketing campaign and was so excited to tell me about his new Caliber, once he drove it, and came here to visit to see the real deal, he promptly traded it in on a Challenger from the middle east. I always thought it was so cool that the passenger side rearview said “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” in Arabic.
When I was in high school, circa 2008, my father was driving a ton for field work and needed something reasonably economical, but with some flexible cargo capabilities. He told me he was after a Toyota Matrix, which was a similar kind of compact pseudo-wagon/hatchback. But he must have tripped and landed at a CJD dealership, because he came home in a lightly used (ex-rental!) 2007 Caliber SXT. It was refrigerator white, but at least it was one step up from the base model, so you got keyless entry, cruise control, alloy wheels, and power locks and windows. It definitely didn’t have the liftgate speakers, but it did have the nifty rechargeable cargo-mounted flashlight that a lot of DaimlerChrysler (and later FCA) vehicles had.
Sadly, and to my eternal chagrin, I learned to drive in the Caliber. And yes, it was a piece of shit.
Personally, if it were my choice and I were looking for that kind of vehicle, I would have gone for the new-for-2009 Elantra Touring (which was released in Spring 2008). It was in that same segment, but was fresher and better-styled than the Toyota and Pontiac siblings. At the same time, this was before Hyundai and Kia products became pieces of crap, so they were good value.
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Time has been unkind to the Caliber, but you have to remember that when it was new, it would have seemed like a decent buy. Especially because Chrysler was advertising the souped-up looking R/T ones, and the blocky, masculine styling was very in at the time. And if you didn’t know any better or if your prior car was much older (previously, Dad had been driving a 1992 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight he’d inherited from my deceased grandmother), it would have been alright.
Also, there was even a brief scrum for the car. When the financial crisis hit and Cash for Clunkers was in effect, dealers couldn’t keep new Calibers in stock. They were selling them off the delivery truck.
That generation of Elantra Touring is low key a car people sleep on. With the manual, they drive shockingly well!
TBF: Dealers couldn’t keep any affordable car in-stock during cash-for-clunkers.
The speakers are very cool. The Caliber, though, is the modern definition of penalty box.
Having dealt with the one my mother bought my brother and SiL – it would have had to have a serious Performance Improvement Plan to level up to being a “Penalty Box”.
Absolute and utter heap of shit is more like it. Most penalty boxes are unpleasant, but reliable. At least with a Caliber the unpleasantness had a an expiration date about as far out as that of a bottle of unpasteurized milk.
This site needs to stop trying to redeem unrepentant shitboxes.
These sucked. My dad’s was a lightly-used 2007, purchased in 2008. By 2011, it was seriously falling apart. And then it got totaled that same year.
It was the funniest thing, too. He called me and I heard the characteristic “doo-DOO-doo” three-note Ford seatbelt chime in the background, and was like, “Why are you driving a Ford?” At which point he admitted he’d wrecked the Caliber after falling asleep on the highway and driving into a culvert, and so was driving a rental Focus. I was like…when were you going to mention this?
Yikes. As someone currently raising an aging parent, my Mom did much the same after she ran the side of her brand new Soul down a concrete post. She thought I would be mad about it, so she didn’t want to tell me. Nope – just a car, get it fixed and go on with it. Now if she had done it to my Mercedes…
“The Dodge Caliber wasn’t an especially good car. Crudely finished, generally unrefined, and frequently hobbled by a continuously variable transmission of questionable reliability, it often finished at or near the bottom of comparison tests back in 2007. A Honda Fit offered better space utilization and fuel economy, a Volkswagen Rabbit boasted far nicer materials”
How is this redeeming anything?
“and the original Nissan Versa was way better than people remember”
I imagine this can be explained as people only remember the horrible CVT while only auto journalists experienced the way better stick shift version.
There is zero reason to bring up the idiotic speaker thing. It’s just another crappy part of a completely and utterly crap car.
They aren’t wrong about the original Versa, especially the hatch. And where I am from MOST of them were sticks.
“There is zero reason to bring up the idiotic speaker thing. It’s just another crappy part of a completely and utterly crap car”
Sure there is. It’s called a deadline.
So it was a mediocre transport system for a good set of speakers. Reminds me a lot of the 2000’s and a lot of Civics.
I hate how much the Caliber and it’s gimmicky features lives rent free in my head.
Yes, the cooled storage box for drinks, the ipod? holder in the center console, the speakers in the rear, the LED lights in the cupholders, and there are probably more things I am forgetting.
Nowadays, the only kind of “MusicGate” we get is when the Director of the FBI uses a government jet to go watch his girlfriend’s band perform.
We truly live in the shittiest timeline
COTD!
I think thats great. Silly? For sure. But still awesome. I’m sure you could upgrade the speakers themselves to make it better quality sound. Overall, I have found I actually quite like the look of a slammed SRT Caliber and would total rock one with that MusicGate.
“Bush party” circa 2007 suggests so very many things to me.