They got a lot of flack when they came out but it seemed like they were really easy to make fast.
Now when I see one on the road, it looks like every other 6-8 year old Neon; dirty, busted, and just, well...."old Dodge" look and sound to it.
They had potential, but even the well done cars still looked like Neons.
The Conquest/Starion and the Eclipse/Talon were the last true good pseudo-Dodge cars around, and even they were not the most put together cars out there, but they were damn fast.
To be fair, for a 4 cylinder car, the SRT4's sounded nasty when done right, which wasn't hard. Open downpipe sounded like ass and made you look like a broke fucker. However if you had a nice 3 inch out the side or back, they sounded mean and angry. Mine was an off brand exhaust that exited out the back, it really helped cabin noise and sounded much more deep and angry than raspy and retarded.
However you're right about the "falling apart look". They just literally start to go to shit with every little thing. Don't get me wrong, the car was quick and a lot of fun to drive when it worked, but that wasn't as often as I would like. Not to mention getting 18mpg in the city and only 23 on the highway sucked dick. Nothing worse than getting only 210 miles on a 9.5 gallon tank of gas.