The Chrysler 300 finally went out of production earlier this year after 18 badass years of production. So when I heard that someone had traded in their 2006 model to Galpin Honda, I knew I had to get the keys — and my god am I glad I did: This V8-powered, rear-wheel drive Teutonic-American sedan may be ancient enough to enlist, and it may be falling apart in more ways than I hoped, but it has a powertrain that even all these years later feels absolutely phenomenal. This traded-in 300C has a strong heart in a weak body, but it’s the former that will win you over. Here, let me explain.
After last week’s Trade-In-Tuesday episode explored the lethargic Toyota Mirai hydrogen car (a “Fascinating Waste Of Money,” as I put it), I was pleased to see on my list of vehicles traded into Galpin’s enormous dealership network a 2006 Chrysler 300C.
You see, the “C,” means it has a HEMI V8, and though this second-model-year 300 is old as all hell and came from an era when V8s were putting out some pretty weak power numbers, its 5.7-liter Hemi V8 has been a beast from day one. The engine actually made its non-SUV/Truck debut in this very car, and it was a mainstay in the Chrysler sedan lineup all the way up until its death just this year. I was excited to try that powerplant out to see if it still held up, and my god does it — well, except not literally. Here, watch that incredible V8 engine do its thing, and then overheat:
The product of an ultimately failed merger between Daimler (maker of Mercedes-Benz) and Chrysler, the Chrysler 300 was a huge deal when it came out, as I’ve mentioned before in my article “Badass For 18 Straight Years: How Chrysler Worked Hard To Keep The Dodge Charger And Its LX-Platform Mates From Going Stale.” As I say in that piece, this was a car that found its way into “driveways of rappers and politicians alike (Barack Obama famously owned a first-gen 300), in some ways bridging the gap between social classes by offering timeless style at a reasonable entry price (the 2005 Chrysler 300 and 2006 Dodge Charger started at about $23,000, which is about $35,000 today).” In that article, I reference a New York Times article titled “From a Bad Marriage, Pretty Babies,” which discusses how Freeman Thomas, Trevor Creed, and ultimately Ralph Gilles had penned such an already-iconic design:
When Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler a decade ago, predictions for the offspring — chunky German sedan meets lithe PT Cruiser — ran to cartoonish extremes. But the 300 hangs marvelously and daringly on the edge of cartoonlike excess, never quite succumbing. The 300 and its Dodge sibling, the Charger, combine American bravado with German solidity, just as the authors of the merger hoped.
The Charger and the 300 changed the definition of the American sedan with an influence as profound as that of the original Ford Taurus in the mid-1980s or the cab-forward Chrysler LH cars — the Chrysler Concorde and Dodge Intrepid— that helped to save the company in the ’90s.
One of the ideas behind the union was to join German taste and restraint with the sort of American exuberance and design vitality demonstrated by Tom Gale, vice president for design at Chrysler from 1985 to 2000, in creating the Prowler, Viper, PT Cruiser and LH sedans.
But beyond the styling, the 300 offered true performance. “The great American sedan reborn — with a little help from Mercedes-Benz” was Motor Trend‘s headline when the publication reviewed the 2005 Chrysler 300C, discussing the vehicle’s Mercedes-Benz underpinnings, stating:
There’s plenty of Benz, mostly of the E-Class variety, in these large machines. The aluminum five-link rear suspension on all 300s is based on the E-Class design, but the 300 has a wider track and bigger wheels and tires, with a steel cradle in place of the E’s aluminum one. The 300’s 120-inch wheelbase is two inches longer than the E-Class’s and just one inch shy of the Mercedes S-Class’s. Its seating position is 2.5 inches higher than the 2004 300M’s, and its generous interior has lots of rear-seat legroom and headroom for six-footers.
Motor Trend was a fan of the 300’s handling, writing:
The car rides more firmly than a Mercedes E-Class (including the air-suspension-equipped models in the softer of its dual settings). Carving up mountain roads tends to be limited more by the perceived size of the car than by its dynamics. There’s moderate roll at turn-in, but the C remains poised as you push it, with mild understeer. The 300’s steering is a bit too light, but it’s also direct and precise. And the big brakes, aided by the optional ABS and brake assist but without the Merc’s electronic brake transfer nanny, are powerful, lending Germanic effectiveness without the electro-artificial feel. Chrysler has thoroughly tackled the noise problem prevalent on the old 300M and Concorde (you couldn’t hold a conversation with back-seat passengers) with a stout chassis and lots of sound deadening. Frame rails are composed of octagonal sections, and there’s liberal use of polyurethane foam throughout. The result is a sedan that feels exceedingly solid and runs quietly until you stomp the throttle to the floor. This car is perfect for an old-fashioned cross-country family trip, but it won’t get soft and unappealing when you get to twisty mountain or canyon roads.
And in its long-term test verdict, Motor Trend praised that big engine:
Nobody ever-ever-complained about the powertrain. The 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 (it should be called a semi-Hemi, if we take the purist’s view about combustion-chamber shape, but who cares) always delivered: powerful, torquey, smooth, and with a subdued but purposeful rumble out of its dual exhausts. Wrote one editor: “The Hemi V-8 is always on tap, ready to run, pass, and blow past the rest of the freeway bog.
Naturally, I was excited to see how an 18 year-old 300C would hold up, both figuratively and literally. And what I learned, as you can see in the video above, is that it holds up unbelievably well metaphorically, and hilariously poorly literally.
A Heap With A Heart Of Gold
The traded-in Chrysler 300 that I drove was a heap: There’s no other way to put it. The silver paint was faded, the front bumper looked like it was a different color than the hood, and the driver’s side fender was black, almost certainly having been replaced after a fender-bender.
The inside looked OK from a distance, but the center stack looked like it was being birthed from the dashboard, with the soft plastic dash having swollen, leaving huge gaps around the radio and HVAC controls:
The seats were also torn:
Here you can see the vent to the left of the gauge cluster coming apart:
Honestly, though, the cabin could have been worse. Interior materials coming out of the DaimlerChrysler era were known for being horrendous, so the fact that I wasn’t sitting on bare foam, holding onto a thin metal steering wheel ,and staring at a big aluminum IP beam was good enough for me.
The worst part, really, was the top of the dash, where it meets the windshield: Check out the warping:
Firing up the 5.7-liter Hemi V8 under the hood yielded a nice baritone, accompanied by a rhythmic “tick” that was almost certainly an exhaust leak in the passenger’s side exhaust manifold:
Otherwise, the motor, which had about 150,000 miles on it, sounded quite smooth. That was, until I put the car into gear.
Once driving, nothing was smooth. There was a loud banging coming from under the car, and there was something happening under the hood. I pulled over right in front of the parking lot exit. What I found was that not only were some lug nuts missing (I’d seen one lug nut missing from a few wheels, but one gone is usually not a huge deal for a short drive), but that the nuts that weren’t missing weren’t actually doing their jobs:
It turns out, the nuts were the wrong size — one size too large! So while they covered the wheel studs, they definitely didn’t build any tension into the threads, meaning there was basically zero clamping force helping hold that wheel on beyond the maybe one or two lug nuts that were actually the right size.
This left me with no choice but to Get In The Zone and buy some new lug nuts for the absurd price of $17 for four nuts:
I drove back to the 300C trade-in, only to realize that I had made the same mistake as the previous lugnut-installer: I’d purchased one size too large.
Eventually, I bought the right size lug nuts, and then found a note in the car that would have been rather helpful a bit earlier:
“Please do not drive. Replace lug nuts on back right tire before driving,” it read.
Now, to be fair, my producer had shown me a picture of a note, and had mentioned that the lug nuts were missing; I didn’t realize that the problem was not that nuts were missing, but that they were the wrong size. When I looked at the wheel, I thought “Ah, someone must have replaced the bad nuts.” Nope, they were still the wrong ones!
Anyway, no harm, no foul.
When I finally got on the road, the horrible clunking sound was gone, but there were still a few noises. For one, the front struts appeared to be shot, as hitting bumps led to some pretty violent crashing. But worse than that was the obvious engine mount problem. Hitting the gas and letting off led that big V8 to hammer itself around the engine bay in a way that was impossible to ignore.
And yet, I couldn’t help but utter the following sentence while driving the old 300C: “How can I love a car this ugly?”
Hitting the gas pedal downshifted the excellent Mercedes-sourced A580 five-speed transmission, letting that lovely 340 horsepower V8 sing. It sounds incredible, and feels legitimately quick, even in 2024 (zero to 60 sprints were measured at around 5.5 seconds when this machine first came out). Couple that fiery motor bolted to a happy-to-please transmission with a cushy ride (other than the strut issue) and buttery smooth steering, and you have a machine with compelling demeanor — it’s stately and humble most of the time, but aggressive and violent when you want it to be.
But it’s still a bit of a heap. And there’s no escaping that. And while I can’t say that applies to all 300s, it does apply to this trade-in, with an interior that’s falling apart, exterior paint that looks flaking off like dry skin off a foot, and plastic and chrome trim that’s given up on life years ago — this machine, which is so much fun, is just wrapped in mediocrity. It’s a beautifully-engineered powertrain and chassis enveloped in a Fisher-Price body.
But the truth is, does this guy doing a burnout look like he gives a damn about any of that?:
No, not at all. Whatever foibles the 300C has, it makes up for it tenfold with a legitimately incredible engine and transmission combo. It’s stout and fun and impossible not to love:
Of course, even when I was having fun, I was always reminded that this was a traded-in, nearly 20-year old DaimlerChrysler heap:
Yeah, that didn’t go so great:
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So, in what will surely stand as a Trade-In-Tuesday record until the end of time, I had to head to Autozone for a third time that day to grab some pliers and antifreeze. Luckily, all I had to do was reinstall the radiator hose with its spring clamp and pour some coolant into the cooling system. No harm, no foul.
Top image: Carlo
The wheels themselves also look to be the wrong size, but on the small side. I believe C’s had 18″ chrome alloys standard, these look like the Touring’s 17″ alloys. Wouldn’t be surprised if some other set of wheels that were worth more than the car were on it in the meantime and a cheap set of Chrysler wheels were located to throw on before offloading it.
If you didn’t watch the video do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to put it on. This one is great- I laughed out loud with the discovery of the crumpled piece of paper.
Did you remove the bleed screw at the top of the water pump with the front of the car elevated? If not, it is likely to overheat again as the hemis trap air that will not burp out on its own.
And this was the BEST interior Chrysler offered at the time, lol.
In all seriousness, the 300 looks great and I hope Chrysler brings it back in spirit soon.
You realise Chrysler also offered the 300C Touring CRD, an estate version with diesel engine, in Europe, don’t you? No, the manual gearbox isn’t offered.
Of course, you have to wait six more years before the oldest one qualifies for the 25-year import rule in 2030.
I’ve seen one of those here down under… its the only automatic wagon I have a true desire to own
I rode in one once, the torque came on strong with that diesel engine and it felt properly quick for a car full of people!
I’ve heard they rip a good skid being a diesel and all that jazz… I’d love a turn
I did not realize! That looks genuinely great.
This makes me miss the Dodge Magnum even more now. I wish it was still in production. We need more wagons stateside.
Also known as “near mint condition” to David.
> And yet, I couldn’t help but utter the following sentence while driving the old 300C: “How can I love a car this ugly?”
Never seen someone with Broken Bird Syndrome for cars, but that’s why we love him.
I have driven one just like this before and yeah, they are fast and fun to drive!
A buddy of mine’s step dad bought one of these as soon as they came out. It was certainly a cool car when it arrived in their driveway. Legit power for the time for anything short of a Corvette or Viper. Looked good.
Interior was still 00’s era Chrysler, so horrible, but I imagine most buyers just wanted to stomp their right foot in these while having 4-doors.
Unfortunately these days, the 300 is second maybe to only the G35/37 in the land of abused used cars that used to be pretty good.
I just want to mention that this massive “barge” is like 4 inches longer than a Camry. For whatever reason, DaimlerChrysler management in Germany was very insistent that the 300 not exceed 5 meters in length, they had ambitions of selling decent numbers of them in Europe and settled on that as an essential metric for some reason, so it worked out to just a slight hair under 5m. Very much on the small side for a full-size car, just slightly bigger than a midsize.
The Charger got a slight stretch to just over 200 inches in order to give it a slightly larger trunk, which was felt important for selling it as a police car, and Daimler had no intention of introducing that model to Europe.
Even Cadillac had to make the unprecedented move, even shockingly for General Motors, with its Seville (fifth generation, 1998–2004) for the European market. Instead of gargantuan 5-mph bumpers, Seville was fitted with thinner bumpers as to slip under five-metre length as some European countries tax heavily for any passenger vehicles exceeding five metres.
So that’s what it is, a tax thing
Over/under on the number of crimes this piece of shit has been part of? I’m going with 4.
We talking felonies or misdemeanors? If the latter, do moving violations like reckless driving count?
I was talking about felonies. If you want to include moving violations and parking tickets, the glovebox of that car would probably explode with them when you opened it like Jim Carey’s car in Liar Liar.
Alright, put me down for 3.
“The worst part, really, was the top of the dash, where it meets the windshield: Check out the warping:”
Its not as bad as the dash in my step dad’s Maranello 550. That thing warped and bubbled despite being stored in a garage. The 300 probably cost a whole lot less to fix too.
(Not a humble brag but a legit warning not to meet your heroes.)
I worked in an automotive machine shop and I’ll never forget delivering the long block for a minor Italian mafia boss’ supercharged Viper. I pulled up to the shop and there was a blacked out 300C just waiting for me and 4 enormous guys in super nice suits helped me lift it out of my truck.
Just something about the 300C felt like a good fit for the mafia crowd.
Interestingly, the 300 was Obama’s choice of ride before he won the presidency.
It is a pretty good car for those with A History of Violence.
I want a video of this thing going through the dealership renewal process.
Epic burnout, bro!
-the waterfall notsomuch
/snark 🙂
my current daily is a 2006 Dodge Magnum R/T, which I love, and this entire article accurately sums up my experience with it. interior is made of recycled tupperware but that 5.7 Hemi sounds divine, even with stock exhaust and a brutal lifter tick (which I should probably deal with, a frozen lifter will eat the camshaft right up)
I remember when I got my first real job out of college, in about 2007 or 2008. It was working at a local law office run by the owner’s son, but the owner and his wife occasionally made an appearance when they returned from Florida. The wife drove a very, very clean 300C and I remember at the time being somewhat impressed by it. The styling, while very much a product of its era, has somehow become simultaneously anachronistic and timeless.
My partner’s daily driver is a 2005 Dodge Magnum R/T, which does have the 5.7-liter HEMI V8. He bought it before we met, at a “Last Chance” car auction not far from his home. He got it for $2,200 a few years ago, on the basis that the auctioneer mistakenly said it had a V6. It has 230,000 miles, or thereabouts.
It is a car that both delights and infuriates me.
I think it has excellent road manners and plenty of pace. The suspension is comfortable, yet compliant, and there’s always power on tap. The Mercedes-Benz 5AT is as smooth as butter. The steering is direct. I don’t love that he straight-piped it, because it’s too loud, but the factory sound is nice.
But the rest of it is, to put it plainly, a piece of shit. The interior materials would embarrass Fisher-Price. It has succumbed to several early (pre-2011) LX-car issues, such as a non-functional sat nav screen, non-illuminating HVAC controls, and a bad blend door. He hadn’t been listening to the radio in it for over a year, because of that sat nav screen. As a Christmas present, I installed a Pioneer touchscreen with CarPlay, and fabricated a custom wiring harness to make it work…only to discover that the Boston Acoustics amp has also gone bad, so now there’s only sound from the dashboard speakers.
Alas.
Of course, we all know Daimler is to blame for why those late DaimlerChrysler cars were so bad. Daimler basically performed a hostile takeover, then cost-cut the shit out of the Chrysler products, while robbing Chrysler of its cash reserves. It would be really interesting to see what an FCA-era Magnum could have been. The 2011+ cars were so much nicer.
Although…the 2011+ Durango kind of looks like a 13/10ths-sized Magnum. If you squint.
someone locally has a lowered Durango for sale and every time I see the thumbnail in FB Marketplace I have to double-take because it really does look like a cartoon-proportions Magnum, and every time it breaks my heart a little
on the HVAC controls, I replaced the backlights in mine; from the factory they’re surface-mount incandenscent bulbs, which is about the stupidest approach to that I could imagine. can’t be replaced easily, and will die eventually. I did orange LEDs tinted with blue nail polish hoping to match the warm incandescent with blue gel look but regrettably now I just have orange HVAC controls.
Yikes. I didn’t realize that’s what the issue was.
Since it’s so easy to replace, I was just going to roll the dice on a junkyard automatic HVAC panel (which can be found in several DaimlerChrysler cars of that era) and see if it had working lights.
yeah, that was my plan too but I got to reading and when I learned they were incandescents I just grabbed what was already in the car and got to soldering. the old bulbs pop off their solder pads pretty easy, it’s not a hard repair, just a baffling choice on Chrysler’s part
I’ll have to give that repair a try…I was a little intimidated by the thought of soldering, so I ignored the panel the last time I had the dash open (’09 Grand Cherokee). All of the HVAC controls are dark now though, so I need to do something. At least some repairs (the overhead console/sunglasses compartment) are super easy.
A small soldering iron and cheap solder will fix that up. Get some thin wires to practice with. There are also practice soldering breadboards out there.
I found a pretty comprehensive thread on an LX forum for how to do it: https://www.lxforums.com/threads/how-to-bulb-swap-everything-on-the-interior.152615/
That’s the best guide for this that I’ve seen… Thanks!
I had a 2006 Charger and enjoyed it in the same ways you did with this 300. I actually dug the engine’s cylinder deactivation feature because when all 8 kicked in it was like a sudden burst of power. I was warned that these things can brick really easily if the hemi overheats. Mine didn’t have any problems like that… but like most Chrysler products, it had plenty of electrical gremlins, especially the “Lightning Bolt of Doom” – a lightning-shaped warning light that would flash while zapping all of your power and there was no way to fix it outside of turning the car off and hoping for the best or replacing the entire computer.
Plus it loved to throw codes that sent me on wild goose chases. The one nice thing is that you could do a trick with the key in the ignition to get it to tell you what kind of error codes you had without having to plug in a scanner.
So I remember about 15 years ago I was sitting in traffic and could feel the lopey idle of a car near me in traffic. As we began moving I saw next to me a Magnum SRT-8 with the 300C front end grafted on to it, all painted in Plum Crazy Purple. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Chrysler missed the boat on not offering a 300C wagon.
Also, I have to admit that even the V6 300s were pretty decent cars all the times I had them as rentals, especially in 300S trim. It’s a shame they don’t have a better reputation.
Yep. The parts bolt right up. Really, the Magnum was much closer to the 300 than the Charger, even sharing its doors with the 300. In Europe, the wagon was actually sold as the 300 Touring, since Dodge has no real presence there.
I have an acquaintance who also did the 300 SRT-8 Touring thing, by retrofitting the 300 parts onto his Magnum. He only just converted it back to a Dodge, to prep it for sale, but for a while, he had a homebrew 300 SRT-8 Touring.
my long-term plan for my Magnum is a 2015+ Charger front end and that gorgeous ruby red the Rams and 300s got the last few years
Technically they did in Europe, the Magnum with a 300 front end was assembled in Austria as the Chrysler 300 Touring, since the Dodge brand wasn’t sold there.
We got them here in Australia too… very tasteful wagon actually
I have voluntarily and happily driven many a 300 in S rental-spec. I happen to like them rather a lot for what they are and tended to choose them from the President’s Circle line when available. My actual car needs push me on other directions so I’ll never own one, but the 300 is comfortable, roomy, has enough power, and drives well for what it is.
Yeah, the later 300s are decent cars for the money, even the interiors aren’t terrible and the Pentastar is a good balance between fuel economy and performance
You’re never driving my 300, is all I’m saying.
As much as I love the Charger’s from this era (Yellow Daytona with the 6.1L is a “dream car” for me), the 300C always enticed me. I remember a friend of mine had one at home, his mom bought one brand new. She replaced the front grille with a “Bentley” style one and even got custom plates for it that said “H0T 300”. Eventually she even got an exhaust on it and it sounded good coming down the road. I learned quickly that the 300 was a car to keep in mind as I got older, but I never pulled the trigger.
I’ve always enjoyed driving the 300, even the newer ones in V6 flavor, as rentals. Big, comfortable, and RWD for fun. Hell, they can make a good DD in the northern states with the AWD system and V8 power in the earlier models which is great fun as well. Don’t sleep on these people!
Please buy this so I don’t
https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/f3a53efa-44bd-40ae-b978-f63117dc905c/
It’s a little bit heinous that that doesn’t have the 8.4″ UConnect system, and I’m amazed they even offered it that way, but that’s otherwise a lovely car. I also thought it was interesting that the 2011-2014 SRT8 LX cars got what was effectively a variant of the Jeep three-spoke steering wheel, instead of the brand-specific Dodge three-spoke or Chrysler four-spoke.
Oh. Oh my… That’s it, right there. Just give me UConnect and it’s mine.
It cannot be understated how much the LX cars took the industry by storm twenty years ago.
I once heard 300s described as “mid level drug dealer cars” and I can’t get that out of my mind. However, a Hemi and rear wheel drive is a Hemi and rear wheel drive regardless of what it’s in. That 5.7 could probably survive the apocalypse and is incredibly tunable.
You can make them into incredibly naughty engines with a few simple bolt ons, and the general consensus is that if you’re going to mod a V8 Chrysler/Doge/Stellantis/whatever the 5.7 is a better choice than the 6.4.
Anyway, the 300 has always been valid and always will be valid. I still think it’s slept on in the grand scheme of things and if you want a fun, comfy daily you could do a lot worse. Hell I think the current/final gen 300s are great buys used. They depreciate like lead balloons and what else with a 370 horsepower NA V8 and rear wheel drive that seats 4 adults are you going to find in the high 20s/low 30s? I’ll wait.
The lower tier of drug dealers have no credit, so they drive Nissan Altimas.
I just bought–for $28,500–a 2018 Genesis G90 5.0 Ultimate AWD, which I describe as looking quite like a Chrysler 300 if it got an elongated wheelbase and went to finishing school. In fact, the other day, my partner mistook it for one. During our road trip, he walked up to a 2015-era Chrysler 300, thinking it was my car. To his credit, both were dark blue.
The G90 is a much better car than a 300, but that’s hardly a fair comparison. The 300, especially with the HEMI and sport appearance package, is a lovely car and a classic.
Nothing but respect for the G90 amigo. That’s a proper luxobarge.
Tune in next Tuesday, for 4 trips to O’Reilly’s!
Seriously, when will the rank and file at Galpin stage a coup to oust David? Or is the kitty cuteness still giving him credit?
David is King, and I’ll not have any slander upon him and his escapades!
Oh do not get me wrong, I’m here for massive burnouts and wreckage of all the trades! I’m assuming it’s only the “$500” trades he is given access to, but I can just see some poor salesman watching a car pull up steaming and have all 4 tires fall off as David tosses the keys to him and walks away.
That 8-series was not a $500 trade, but otherwise, yes. Hell, the 8-series was a “who trades one of these in?” when you could sell it to an enthusiast.
Nah. Never gonna happen. He’s too important. If anything, they will make him buy the car.
A car like this is going straight to the auction block for basically scrap money. It has next to no value to Galpin. I get that DT wanted the lugnuts to drive it, but probably could have just left the radiator as is.
I look at these periodically, wondering if one is my next daily driver. I have a long commute, so the halfway decent ride would be nice. But it would be worse on gas than my current commuter. But if I got one, it would be the hemi. There is little appeal in the v6 version.
I’ve also considered face swapping a magnum with a 300 to create myself a Euro style 300C wagon. That would also be neat.
I have an acquaintance who created his own homebrew 2008 300 Touring SRT-8, by swapping a 300 front clip onto his Magnum.
I’m curious about this. How much has to be swapped? Just the front facia? Facia and hood? Fenders, facia, and hood?
Once done, how well do the 300 bits align with the Magnum bits?
I’d like to face swap a Magnum face onto a retired police cruiser Charger just to troll the Dodge Bros.
I believe it’s the entire front end. So…everything up to the firewall (fenders, front fascia, probably the hood) But it all bolts up.
from my extensive (read 5 minutes worth) of internet research, my understanding is the same as Kyree. Full front clip and it will bolt up. Door leading edge and windshield leading edge are the same so no weird gaps. You should look up a 300 faced Challenger. They are….disturbing.