I don't have any problem with the engine. It has populated much of the Chryco lineup. It's been used now for enough years that I think most of the early release hiccups have been ironed out. My son-in-law has it in his 2014 Durango. It gets great mileage mated to the ZF 8 speed tranny, and is plenty powerful enough. He's coming from a Lexus and a Nissan Murano and had pretty much sworn off American vehicles until he needed a 7 passenger vehicle. He as told me repeatedly that the Durango is the best vehicle he's ever had. And when he bought it, he drove from Missouri to Rhode Island, pulling a trailer and loaded for bear.
I wonder though, if the tranny may be the weak link in the Promaster. The 8 speed ZF is plenty beefy enough but it's used exclusively in north/south rear drive configurations (like the Durango). The nine speed is used in front drive vehicles, but most are lighter weight vehicles. To my knowledge, the largest vehicle where they use the Pentastar engine in a front drive setting (prior to the Promaster) is the mini-van. And they're still using the 6 speed in it, which I assume is the same tranny as the Promaster. That may be why they're sticking with the 6 speed.
As an aside, you might wonder why so many gears. I can tell you from driving my son-in-law's Durango that it's a great tranny. With that many gears, you have plenty of power at the low end, but it never revs up too much between shifts. The gear changes are almost imperceptible. But it has a sport mode where the engine revs a bit higher RPM before changes, which is helpful if you're more heavily loaded. And, all Durangos comes with paddle shifters. Really helpful when you're going to pass. You kick the tranny down a couple gears, and the tranny will hold it in the gear until you've completed the pass and then you can manually shift back to the the higher gear. (In contrast and by way of example, my old pickup would downshift when I passed then upshift just about the time I was ready to pull back into my lane of traffic, and when the tranny shifted the engine would then dog out.) If they could figure out a way to put that system in the Promaster, I think you guys would really, really like it. But alas, it's not to be as of yet.
I other feature I really like in his Durango is the adaptive cruise with accident avoidance. I think that would be great in the PMs.
