Long-Term Road Test Wrap-Up
Months in Fleet: 13 months
Current Mileage: 40,320 miles
Average Fuel Economy: 20 mpg
Average Range: 382 miles
Service: $628
Normal Wear: $0
Repair: $0
Damage and Destruction: $1753
When the time came for our Chrysler 300C to exit the C/D stage, the sizable sedan did so without a hint of drama. So casual was its departure, it actually lingered about the office long enough to collect a thousand or so additional miles and some final comments. The 300C’s amiable personality and cavernous interior helped the big lug win a lot of friends here, and a couple of logbook comments were repeated over and over during its tenure: “This is a great highway cruiser,” and “nice engine.” And although it continued to surprise drivers with moves that belied its size and heft, the 300C’s true forte was effortlessly gobbling roadway hundreds of miles at a time.
Please Take Your Seats
Despite lots of love for their heating and cooling functions, the seats received nearly unanimous criticism for their hard, flat seatbacks. One staffer whose sole exposure to the 300C came near the end of its stay wondered “if they were this way from the start or if 40,000 miles of hard use had transformed them.” Some suggested that offering the bolstered seats from the SRT version of the 300 could cure the woes. Only two staffers, both known to suffer from mild back problems, found them up to the task of offering long-term support, one going so far as to deem them “worthy of something far more expensive” after emerging pain-free from an eight-hour excursion.
Aside from the seats, which were beginning to show traces of surface wear, the interior held up reasonably well. Covered almost entirely in black, however, there wasn’t much that could go wrong; Chrysler wisely chose to make the most of the resources at hand and go understated with the treatment, as cheap flash likely would be losing its shine at this point.
The Alpine sound system continued to win raves, one staffer mentioning that it, combined with the 300C’s quiet interior (40 dB at idle, 70 dB at 70-mph cruise), easily drowned out typical Ann Arbor game-day hysteria while stuck in a throng of traffic and fans directly in front of the Big House, home turf of the University of Michigan Wolverines.
Second Act
The biggest incident in the 300C’s stay here was triggered by something greater and more powerful than Chrysler, C/D, or even U of M football: Mother Nature. A freak hailstorm pummeled the 300C (and several additional cars) with golf-ball-sized projectiles, resulting in more than a half-dozen dents of varying severity. We called in the Dent Wizard (unaffiliated with that Harry Potter fella), who charged $1753 to make all the dents disappear like, well, magic.
Just a few days later, we returned to the dealer to have some ABS wiring repaired for free under recall and to have a mild brake vibration checked out. Diagnosed as a pair of warped rotors, the dealer ordered replacements. We stopped back for the 24K service ($51) a few days later and had the rotors installed along with an oil change, a tire rotation, and the usual round of inspective prodding.
Around the 30,000-mile mark, we began noticing a few creaks and groans in the body and some hard shifting and clunking on aggressive downshifts or when backing out of the throttle quickly. The transmission never declined to the point of missing shifts or slipping, and nothing odd turned up during service appointments. The creaks didn’t get any worse for the duration of the test and were only a slight annoyance.
The next 7000 miles went by without a hitch, and we rolled back to the dealership for the 32,000 service in September 2012. For the tidy sum of $434, we got fresh oil and a filter, a tire rotation, engine and cabin air filters, new spark plugs (remember, the Hemi takes 16 of these), and related inspections. Less than a month later, we discovered water in the trunk, which the dealer diagnosed as an embarrassing case of a leaky CHMSL and replaced it free of charge.
Close to the 40,000-mile finish line, one tester noticed a slight amount of roughness in the Hemi engine at idle and mentioned a perceived increase in ride harshness. But, most disconcertingly, he noted the presence of bump steer over frost heaves and nonlinear steering feel in long, high-speed sweepers, which he attributed to the likely wear or misalignment of suspension components. But these complaints, while the car was shod with winter tires, were isolated, and the car checked out okay when inspected by the dealer. This is a 4340-pound sedan that pulls 0.85 g on a 300-foot skidpad, numbers that a decade or two ago were sports-car territory. Even so, the 300C’s brakes came in for some criticism for being spongy and lacking feel, in stark contrast to the engine, which was described by another driver as “the best part of the car.”
As the end of our 300C’s stay approached, Chrysler notified us about a recall on the radio unit and said to bring the car in for free replacement. We did, but at no time did we experience problems with the radio, navigation, or Bluetooth systems. Shortly thereafter, an electrical foible of a different type appeared. The electric trunk release randomly and repeatedly unlatched after startup but never opened while under way, and it seemed to cure itself after a week or two. Several speculated that a dying battery or faulty contacts in the remote fob were to blame. We went in for our final service at 40,320 miles in order to send the sedan off with an oil change, tire rotation, and 27-point inspection ($59).
The Grand Finale
Performance-wise, the 300C didn’t miss a beat during its stay, our final test session indicating that it matched or bettered its initial numbers in almost every measure with the exception of 70-to-0-mph braking, which increased by a negligible one foot to 166 feet. Zero-to-60 acceleration dropped by 0.1 second to 5.3, and the 0-to-100 time improved by 0.4 second, to 12.8. But the most impressive number posted by the 300C was fuel economy. On at least two instances, long-haul drivers managed to post a highway mileage figure of 26 mpg, beating the EPA’s estimate of 25 mpg. Not bad for a 4340-pound car with a Hemi V-8, and here we credit the 300C’s displacement-on-demand system that deactivates four cylinders when the car is cruising under light load.
The Chrysler’s remote-start feature won fans in winter and summer, heating or cooling the interior before passenger entry, and the spacious trunk easily handled enough luggage for four on a week-long trip, both of which help underscore the point of the vehicle. You get a lot of space, power, and content for the as-tested price of $39,990. By this measure, the 300C is a deal.
