My wife bought a 2008 Roadster (6 speed manual) brand new in Oct '08, and it wound up being the most mixed ownership experience we have ever had in a car.
Driving it was fun, and when you replaced the Continental EcoSport tires with something that actually sticks to the road, the driving experience is enhanced greatly.
What wasn't fun?
Having it go back to the dealership over and over again due to warranty repairs.
The car had well over $21k in warranty work done in the 3 years we owned it.
There was an issue with the main grounding point for all of the main computers that wound up taking out the BCM several times, the Air Bag ECU once, The SKREEM unit once, the ECU once, and causing trip after trip to the dealership for repairs for several months straight until they tracked down the source of all the issues.
Here's a picture of how well the car was put back together after one of these repair visits, when we got home, and had trouble getting the trunk open:
Yes, that's their tools for removing the body trim, along with all the parts just laying in the trunk, with the panel hanging by its emergency escape cord.
Then later, there was a defect in the clutch where a spring in the pressure plate broke, and it took out the clutch and the flywheel at the 9k mile mark.
So, we had to wait a week or so for the flywheel to arrive from Germany, which after the car was repaired, and was handed over to me, I learned that the car WOULD NOT rev over 3k rpms, where it would shut off 1 bank of cylinders on the drive home. That meant that the dealership didn't test drive the car after they repaired it. Turns out, the flywheel was dropped, and the tone ring damaged, somewhere between the factory in Germany, and install on the car. That, of course, meant several more weeks while we waited for yet another flywheel to be sourced in Germany and shipped to Colorado.
Then at 11k miles, a common issue popped up with the engine starting to leak oil from a part on top of the valve covers that was not well sealed from the factory (not enough gasket sealer that dried out, and started weeping), so I decided to pop off both covers, and repair it myself, instead of taking it to the dealership and having them screw up the car one more time.
The biggest problem was that at the same time that we owned the Crossfire, we also owned a 1998 Boxster, and that car, during the exact same time period, had less mechanical problems than the Crossfire, and it had ~80k miles when we bought it. The Boxster drove better, had better handling, better brakes, was more reliable as a used purchase, and was just more fun to drive either as a daily driver, up in the mountains, or out at HPR, a road course racetrack.
The final straw with the car was when we had parked the car, and was closing the convertible top, when the front of the top slammed shut hard, without any warning, and nearly took off my daughter in laws fingers as she was reaching up to work the latch. We drove it to a Fiat dealer in Texas to trade it in for a Fiat 500 Sport just to get rid of it as thoroughly as possible. We never wanted to see it again, and driving it 800 miles away was worth it to us.
You literally could not pay us enough to ever own one again.
I don't have much good to say about the Crossfire Forum, either.
Way too many people who are overly fixated on the fact that its a Merc under the Chrysler badge, and think that owning a Chrysler badged Merc built product somehow makes them members of the Elite class.
BC.