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Chrysler woos executive buyers with an all new 300C

Chrysler 300C 3.0 CRD V6 Executive Auto business car review
The all new 300C is has presence, great refinement, and surprisingly brisk performance and handling for a car of this size. Will the badge attract enough drivers looking for an alternative to the usual diet?

Chrysler300C_Action2
The lofty Bentley grille is gone

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13 June 2012

Interior is lavish, but feels more European than US glitz
Like its predecessor, the 300C has bags of presence

With a kerb weight of nearly 2.2 tonnes the 300C can be expected to set no new, business user-friendly CO2 or fuel consumption benchmarks. Nor does it.  The Executive model tested (price premium over the ‘Limited’ model made up largely of better trim and sound system, full length sunroof and bigger wheels and tyres) has EU combined economy of 39.2mpg and CO2 output of 191 grammes/kilometre.

So if you want a new Chrysler 300C as a company car, expect a 32% company car tax banding on a P11D price of £39,480.

What’s hot?

  • It’s not a BMW…
  • Or an Audi…
  • Or a Jaguar
  • Impressive size and ‘presence’ for money
  • Impressive ‘all-in’ specification for money
  • Lusty, refined engine – one of the best
  • Surprisingly fast, competent, agile ‘B’ road performer
  • Overall refinement a match for Europeans
  • Pleasingly simple yet functional cockpit layout and controls
  • Interior aesthetics won’t jar with most British business users
  • Full-length, dual-pane sunroof
  • Class-leading active safety systems…
  • …including collision-avoidance radar
  • to curb unsafe speed through bends

What’s not?

  • It’s not a BMW…
  • Or an Audi…
  • Or a Jaguar
  • Residual values unlikely to match up to Euro-executive car levels
  • Only average fuel economy, too high CO2 emissions
  • Styling will not be to all tastes
  • …but that may be the main attraction for individualists

Business Car Manager road test verdict

There is one question asked endlessly by casual observers of the first-generation Chrysler 300C which will be asked no more about its successor:

“I say, isn’t that a Bentley?”

Few are likely to be ready to admit it. But there is more than a motor trade suspicion that the sight of the original’s imposing grille, sweeping up imperiously behind “lesser” traffic, was a significant factor in the original 300C finding 1,000 or so individualistic, mainly business- user buyers in the UK for each of the six years it was on sale.

Gone is the Bentley-esque grille that was a feature of the Mark 1 pictured here

The grille has gone; replaced by a smaller, more anodyne and wholly anonymous opening flanked by headlamps which, to a casual eye, might have been lifted from an Audi. Only the side profile of the new car bears strong resemblance to, and immediately identifies, its parentage.

It is a styling decision Chrysler/Fiat may well come to regret; or would were its sales target for the car in the UK not so relatively unambitious: just 750 units a year.

And that would be a shame; for the 300C Mk 11 has a great deal to recommend it. It is pleasingly styled, even if the main ‘icon’ styling factor has been ditched.

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Matt Morton

Matt Morton

Matt Morton is an automotive content writer for Business Car Manager

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