Yeah, it is an interesting setup. The only major drawback to it that I am not impressed by is that the thermostat's location does not ensure that it always sees the hottest coolant in the engine, and the temp of the coolant that does flow past it is subject to a certain amount of variation based on how hard you are running the heater, even while coolant temp in the engine itself is constant. Most of the coolant that runs by the t-stat wax pellet has first passed through an external circuit somewhere (oil cooler, cold start thermostat, heater core) so not only is there some degree of temperature differential versus the coolant in the cylinder head, that differential is not constant, depending on other outside factors. Meanwhile, the sender for the temp gauge is mounted right in the end of the cylinder head, not far from the #1 prechamber, which means it is measuring cylinder head temp pretty directly, but is far away from the t-stat..... resulting in considerable fluctuation of the coolant temp in the cylinder head and corresponding fluctuation of the reading of the temp gauge, especially when the engine is running under heavy load.
The 2.0L five and 2.4L six-cylinder motors have a particular tendency towards headgasket failure and head warpage, which to me indicates a problem with temperature control.... mainly, IMO, that the coolant in the head may be considerably (and variably) hotter than the coolant reaching the thermostat. A slightly cooler-than-stock thermostat seems to go a long way towards stabilizing running temp on these units. An 87c thermostat is OK if that's where the whole engine is running, but if the coolant in the head is 20c hotter than that, can lead to trouble... After having done four 2.4L headgaskets in the past year I have started putting in a Wahler 80c tstat in every one that I work on, seems to make no difference in heat output or gauge reading but keeps the needle from climbing on hills. YMMV