While in California a couple of weeks ago, we had a Chrylser 300 rental to get around in. Driving the car for a week did not put Chrysler into my list of potential car purchases.
First Glance
From the outside the car looks OK. Its tall waistline/short windows give it a muscular, aggressive line seen throughout most of Chrysler’s lineup. The 300 is not the most attractive car, but it certainly isn’t an Aztek. If I was to put it to a 5 star rating, the 300 rolls in around a 3 ½ on purely exterior aesthetics.
The interior fairs about the same. The seats were comfortable and the dash was laid out fine. Given my height (6′ and a bit) and seating / steering position, part of the gauge cluster was hard to read. On the plus side, the fit and finish was nice and, with 32,000 miles on the car, it was free of squeaks and rattles. It wasn’t full-size car plush and fancy, just nice.
One word of caution about the seats: do not drop anything between the seats and the center console. The seat bracket mount is in an uncovered hole that, despite conventional physics, is far deeper than the floor pan should allow. I had the misfortune of dropping a small Barbie accessory (hey, I was traveling with my 4 year old) into the 3″ deep void. Happily I managed to retrieve the princess crown.
Driving Impressions
Ride was big-car cushy. A little bit more wallow than I car for, but very similar to Cadillacs and Lexuses that I have ridden in. Riding in the back seat was less comfortable. While there was enough room for me (on a 2 hour jaunt to Anaheim), the ride was much more jouncy than up front.
From the driver’s seat, however, the 300 has more blind spots that a macular degeneration conference. The short windows combined with overly thick pillars made changing lanes a crap shoot at best. After a couple of days of double-checking mirrors and craning my head around looking for traffic, I simply started to throw on a blinker, count to three and moved lanes. Sorry to those of you in San Diego that I cut off.
Getting around tight spots and parking was also a challenge. The short trunk is completely invisible from inside the car, and the hood only barely visible. After a couple of days I did begin to develop a feel for where the ends of the car were, but I was never supremely comfortable. (Nor, I should say, did I actually hit anything. Always good.) Rating: 2 ½ out of 5.
Drive Line
Here the 300 really fails to impress. The 6-cylinder engine sort of maybe felt powerful, but that didn’t actually translate into being powerful. Mashing the accelerator made noise and you wanted to believe that you were muscling away, but the not-vanishing landscape outside the windows told a different story.
But the real problem was the transmission. While cruising The 5 and The 15 (as they seem to say in San Diego) the 300’s transmission couldn’t decide which gear to use — it was forever hunting between 3rd and overdrive. The slightest elevation change caused it to drop out of OD. It would then decide no, it didn’t really need to and shift back up. Upon further reflection, maybe 3rd gear was better after all. And down again it would go.
If there is one continual knock on American cars (and by that I mean The Big Three) is quality. The transmission on the 300 we rented had a rather worrisome “ka-slump” that we could feel and hear when it changed from 1st to 2nd gear. And it got worse as the week wore on.
Yes, this was a rental car so we can expect some abuse. I’ll cut Chrysler some slack and I’ll call the 32,000 actual miles equivalent to 64,000 miles. And yet my Mazda has 147,000 miles of abusive driving and the transmission is still pretty slick. Likewise my wife’s 2005 Accord (American-made) with 50,000 miles has zero hiccups. (Full disclosure: her Accord does have a nagging tail light problem and a continually out dome light.)
Drive line rating: 1 out of 5.
Overall
The Chrysler 300 failed to impress any of the three people who drove it. Two of us (mother-in-law and myself) are in the market for a new car, and a week with the 300 did not put Chrysler to the top of either list.
Overall rating: 2 out of 5.
