SIX months ago, we took delivery of this Dodge Caliber with a tinge of trepidation.

Will we be stranded in the CTE tunnel? Will we be visiting the petrol station every two days? Will we turn into driving zombies.

Will our friends shun us?

After all, no one in these parts has had such a car for so long. No one we knew, at least.

After 180 days and nearly 7,000km, we are glad to say our fears have largely been in our heads. Heck, we even made some new friends. Strangers actually come up to us at parties to ask what we're going to do to the car next.

If I recall, we've V-Kooled the car, fitted it with 20-inch bling-bling wheels, given it a kick-ass audio-visual system (with reverse camera), thrown in an easy-to-use hands-free Bluetooth set, equipped it with cornering lights and given it a polish.

Last but not least, we let loose a couple of up-and-coming urban artists on it.

For a finale, we gave the car's cabin an anti-odour treatment, which we put to the test this week: by having a durian feast in the hatch.

We opened a bag of D24-grade fruit in the trunk (without the protection of old newspapers), and dug in.

After the odiferous orgy - complete with in-vehicle after-meal belching - we parked the car in the sun, windows wound up.

We came back to it on the third day, and voila. No smell at all. A couple of passengers we picked up soon afterwards did not detect anything funky either.

Could the treatment by Hycare have been so effective? To know for sure, we should have had a similar durian meal in an untreated Dodge Caliber. But that would be asking DaimlerChrysler to take an even bigger risk than re-merging.

We found out another thing through the durian test. The car's boot flooring is as tough as granite. No sign of scratches or pitting after the thorny torture.

The car itself didn't fare too badly on the whole, either. It did not act up mechanically in the six months (unlike some of the automotive group's other products that we've sampled). It covers 100km on 8 litres of fuel on the highway (except on the Central Expressway) and 12 litres in Orchard Road - better than we expected, really.

It handles like a yak, rides like a camel and is as noisy as hell. But for some strange, inexplicable reason, we think we might even miss it after we return it next week.

It has been a psychedelic trip, man. Just don't ask if we'll do it again.

This long-term test was made possible by Chevron, which provided all the Caltex with Techron petrol we needed.