| Pictures from Picture Gallery |
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1999 |
As soon as I picked up the Solara, my first priority was to lower
the top. But where the heck was the power-top switch? I eventually
found it, hidden on the left side of the dash behind the steering
wheel, next to an identical switch that raises and lowers all four
windows. Neither switch is illumnated, and in the dark it's
virtually impossible to tell them apart. Raising the windows meant
groping for one of the switches, pressing it, then waiting to see
if anything happened. Lousy design. Another problem is the lack of
lockable storage. Common convertible wisdom is to park with the top
down; better to let the theives steal your $400 stereo without
ripping your $3,000 convertible top. The Solara has a covered
storage tray below the stereo and a huge bin beneath the armrest,
complete with a power outlet to charge your mobile phone. But
neither of them can be locked. (The Chrysler's center console bins
are lockable.) The only lockable storage is the glovebox and the
trunk. I wanted to change CDs while driving, but oops, my CD case
was in the trunk. Another time I forgot to unlock the glovebox
before driving off, so Robin had to wait to get to her cell phone
until we could stop and shut off the car. What a pain.
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