Before I found myself covering heavier matters like the meteoric rise of China in the electric space, I foolishly fantasized about being a full-time reviews guy. Teenage Kevin saw himself as a midwestern Top Gear presenter, without the British-ishms. No, my mom purged those from me and forbade me from talking about Top Gear in her presence after I called something “spot on,” and she went on a tirade about how the proper term in the United States is “right on,” and that we were not British. Tangent aside, what I later learned doing this professionally is that writing a car review is actually one of the hardest, most time-consuming parts of this job. At least for me, it’s a balance of being informative and entertaining, while balancing that against objectivity and respect for the reader’s time. Yet, it’s easy for a car to slip through the cracks, and the Dodge Hornet R/T was one of them. For weeks, I’ve pretended not to notice the “Dodge Hornet PHEV” to-do item glaring back at me on my list of tasks. I flew to China twice and Japan once before I ever finished my review on Dodge’s littlest crossover.
