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I gave a fair true analysis of my test drive.. nothing more.. I truly had no intent on bashing a very nice looking car.. it seems that those on here would only like glorified sugar coated test drives...without any negative opinions...
apologies to those to whom that nerve has been tweeked a bit.. I'll be back looking at the 300C in six months to see if I was right about it..all I can say is .. ta-da ..PT Cruiser and what they were getting at first and where are they now
my wife still likes the 300.. then again she could care less if it has a 6 cylinder in it or a Hem-mee..the clock ticks as she only now has five days left on her '01 'burban lease...
by the way, the 'Hem-mee' way of writing 'Hem-mee' comes from that cute Dodge Durango commercial with the father telling the little kid to say 'Hem-mee'.. like I said, a marketing gimmick..
and still.. no one has addressed why Chrysler is holding back delivering all the 300's they have out there in never-never land.. if anyone has any true, not rumor info, I'd like to hear it.. now that should be a bag of worms..
speaking of, it's time to go do some fishing this early Sunday morning.. gotta load up my new '04 Suburban LT non-Hem-mee boring 4x4 tank that I just got a couple of weeks ago after turning in my '01 Z71 'burban at the end of it's lease.. .. they ain't perfect by any stretch..and that's another test drive report ..but they serve my purpose these days even without a 'Hem-mee'..
for a total of seven.
Intrepidation asked: Query, do any of the owners have adjustable pedals? If so, are they tied to the seat memory? Also, are the outside mirrors connected to the memory as well? Is the steering wheel's position tied to it?
Everything on memory is this: Power Pedals, radio stations, side-view mirrors, seat adjustment, steering wheel height / tilt.
The owner's manual tells how to kill the annoying buckle-up chime. I screwed up the wife's memory (no pun intended, LOL) while resetting mine, so still fighting with that. I still have a blind spot with the rear-view mirror. I have the seat as low as it can go, so I see I need to move the seat back further perhaps, or tilt the back more so as to slide my sight under the mirror.
Fighting a bad back this weekend, so I haven't felt like playing around with the new toy.
Speaking of stakeout, don't we have any of our Canadian friends with a camera who can snap a few pics of those supposed 300's sitting in an old "amusement park" lot up there?
First it was the strike, then it was hold until nearer to Premiere Night, then something else. Just rumor or fact?
fastdriver
BTW, the sub is in the rear deck, I'm 99% sure, not the dash. The center speaker in the dash has to do with the 5.1 sound ... again about 99% sure. I am very firm in my indecision! :-)
the worse part of getting a new vehicle for my wife every three years.. that's why we lease ... is finding her one.. hard to make up her mind..narrows it down to two or three then somehow color enters the picture.. tries to get me to make a decision so down the road if anything goes haywire with the vehicle guess who gets blamed for it.. I know better after 32 years of being married to her and these days let her pick her own..
.. and where are all those cars that were shipped supposedly in Jan and Feb.. hmmmm??.. it's usually bad enuff trying to negotiate and buy/lease a new vehicle for the average consumer , then the mfgr's throw this stuff into the mix to help out their bottomline..as well as their dealers.. to heck with the buyers... not nice..
Hey stakeout, I also am retired from law enforcement and yes we do sometimes have a warped sense of humour.
I have only seen the silver and a black and I'm not partial to these colours, so I may go to that green or whatever you call it. I'm not sure I'd like the Lava Red. I wish they had this car in Inferno Red.
they were able to go to their Dealer and purchase the car off the lot. My local Dealer has three or four 300's on the lot but only one C.
-- Mark
Are you anywhere near this "amusement" parking lot that people were talking about the last few months where all these 300's were supposedly parked?
fastdriver
1. Does it interface with the radio system to speak directions? Is there a microphone in the car where you can give it verbal commands?
2. What are the ways you can use to put in destination information?
3. Does it give trip info like time/distance traveled, and remaining to destination?
4. Generally, how accurate and easy to use (and see) is the system?
Thanks...
Check out how low the first gear is in the Mercedes transmission.
I just came back from my local 5* which is closed but both of the C's were parked side by side and I had a good look at the black paint on the one and it sure had a nice fleck in the paint.
Also both these cars have the Nav system and I saw one working on Thurs but these cars did not have that hump on the roof that I see on the DC US site. I wonder what that means? They sure are lookers.
as for the Lava Red.. just stopped by another Dodge-Chrysler dealer a few miles north of us ..it's Sunday and no one around.. so it's nice to browse the lots... anyway.. they had a Lava Red 300 Touring on the lot...it happens to be a really nice color.. in fact it's $150 extra for it.. wife liked it.. only had a 6 cylinder in it.. listed for $29085 or close to that but .. and this is where the but comes in.. they had a baloney extra sticker on the car.. as they do with ALL their cars on this lot.. $1295 for sealant, protection, special discounts and who knows what other baloney ...total came to over $30K with the 'additional dealer markup' sticker ..that dealership has a bad rep around here for not being nice to people.. to show you what kind of owners they have.. and I got this from someone who knows how they w*rk... the owners just told all the sales people a few weeks ago that all their benefits like medical would be taken away.. that same week, he paid for a trip to Cancun for all of management.. most of which are all family members.. a lot of the sales people pulled out and walked away...
nvbanker... that's what started me on the Hem-mee thing.. the Durango Hem-mee was a really big disappointment to me.. on the test drive, I kicked it down from a standing start.. so-so.. from a 25-30 mph roll took a while to kick down for passing.. and still not what I expected.. just nothing there from what I could see.. then again the Durango is not made for blastaway starts with 4wd etc.. but I thought there should have been more to it.. the 300C has a lot more guts but not what they say it has.. or what the mags say it has.. gotta get that right before someone jumps on me... I thought Chrysler was touting near those figures also.. but hay..
b4z.. the 300C with it's high 2.92 gears should be slower off the line and faster at the top end if I can remember way back in my 60's days of drag racing.. better mileage on the 300C than lower 3.92 gears like in the Durango
They even had a Limited, not fully loaded I might add, that was listed at $42k. As long as people pay, the markups will be there. So I reiterate again, if you're considering a 300C do not pay above MSRP as it ruins it for the rest of us.
But I know the feeling. My mom's '02 Avalanche rips and snorts like a Vette when you push it, and it both sounds and feels fast. My Caddy, on the other hand, is very smooth, silky, and turbine-like on the road--it doesn't feel or sound like you're going fast until you look down at the speedo.
The more refined and polished a car, sometimes it doesn't have that "monster" feel to it like may be expected. I trully believe Chrysler's 0-60 times are correct for how what a typical driver might be expect; Car & Driver ALWAYS gets a much better time out of any car, just like with the 300C, because, well, they're just really good drivers.
So, point being, I guarantee any of you that think so, the 300C is not slow and the HEMI is not a joke. Also try and remember, when a car only has a few miles on it, it's not going to be as loose and broken in as one that's been around the block a few times--like those that the magazine's get.
Owners, enjoy the coming weeks!
If only the engine management controller would remember driver 'tastes'. ;-)
The hemi-engined cars of the 60s weighed a LOT less. Anyone remember F=ma from high school physics
In the quest for the best performance, many of the high-output cars went down the road of no power anything, no carpets, cheap bench seats, even, in the hard-core cases, 'delete heater'.
Personally, I would rather have A/C, a good sound system, comfy seats with as little unwelcome noise as possible, and I'll give up 0.3 seconds in the 0-60 times to have it.
As for the Hemi.....
Yes, Mopar is playing with it's heritage by using the Hemi name, and why not? They've been making Hemis since 1951. However, trying to compare this 5.7 Hemi to the King Kong 426
is absurd. I once owned a '54 New Yorker with the 331 Hemi, and as nice as it was, it certainly wasn't in the same catagory as a '67 Hemi GTX. Same thing here with the 300, you buy it not for tearing up the streets, you buy it as a luxury sedan, maybe even one can stretch it to be called a luxury roadster. Enjoy it, have fun with it, yet treat it in the manner for which it was designed.
Stakeout, we are from the same years. I retired in June of 1990 after 20 years of service plus 13 years military which gave me a combined pension of 33 years, so this is why I can drive 300, or so I think.
beach15... have you ever taken a test drive in the Durango ...see if you think it's fast.. or sneaky-fast.. it ain't by a long shot.. virtually any car can do '90'+ or better.. don't mean that kind of fast... try it and test drive one if you haven't.. then come back and say that same thing.. I did a test drive..out of a dealer in Myrtle Beach a couple of weeks back...a Durango Hem-mee Limited .. it ain't fast .. here's a post I made on the Durango board back then..
stakeout "Dodge Durango" Mar 16, 2004 9:26pm
I feel I know my cars pretty well from having different ones over the years ..not an expert by any stretch.. but I think I can tell what's fast and what isn't.. here's a few .. all were new when bought..except the VW Bug.. ' 65 Goat , '66 Belvedere Conv 383.. none in '67 as I was eating Uncle Sam's chow in RVN.. '68 RoadRunner... '69 Vette Conv 350-350 ...'70 Duster 340 .. '72 Satellite 383...'75 280Z... '83 RX7... then a few SUV's like the Explorer Limited 4x4's in '93 and '95..'97 Expedition..'99 Subn ...'01 Z71 Subn and currently a new '04 Subn 4x4..which BTW ain't fast!... more in between.. like a VW Diesel Rabbit, a VW Bug... Mazda 626..even a '91 Lincoln Town Car Cartier or 'thee boat' as I called it back then..
I'm now retired and 'feeding ravenously out of the deep civil service feeding troughs' of the NYS Retirement system.. and very happily I might add.. I do a lot of fishing.. gave up golf for a bum shoulder.. and we do a lot of Caribbean cruising over the winter months
from day one of retirement...my less stressful retirement philosophy.. or actually my retirement motto is.. " I do nothing.. I do it well.. I then move on to doing more of nothing... when one does nothing, one can never be wrong"... and w-*-r-k is a 4-letter word NOT in my vocabulary.. as my friend says.. W-*-R-K -FM makes for a nice radio station call letters
Thanks.
I was thinking that the darker leather and black carpets would be easier to maintain, however, I sat in a Touring model and I thought the dark interior looked drab.
The light grey interior looks fantastic, but the carpets are almost white. I'm concerned about dirt, mud, snow, etc. Do you guys have opinions?
Moderator: I hope you intend to remove off-topic posts. It's bad enough that a person can't spell "Hemi" correctly, but rambling about unrelated topics is just annoying. Someone needs another hobby.
i haven't driven a durango hemi, but i have driven two 4x4 hemi quad cabs...and they were easily faster than any other 4x4 v8 truck i've driven, and that includes my '02 5.4l supercrew...an '04 supercrew and an '03 chevy. nissan titan gives it a run for it's money though. anyway, me thinks your expectations are waaaayyy tooo high. if you compare the 5.7l to its current competition...it is more than adequate and bests most of em...in HP/torque and 0-60. yet you continue to discount all these tests because they don't fit your perception of reality.
all i can say is i'm glad that your butt-o-meter has proven itself time and time again...and that all that testing equipment that mags rely on is no better than horse poo! i think edmunds should hire you for their acceleration testing...that way they wouldn't have to spring for fancy equipment...
Many of the cars today have 5 speed automatic transmissions.
1st gear in the 300C is 3.59 vs. a 1st gear of 2.48(for example)in a 3 speed auto or 4 speed manual from the '60s or '70s.
A 4 speed auto might have a 3.06 or 3.08 1st gear.
The 300C with it's 3.59 1st gear and 2.92 rear gear has a overall ratio in 1st of 10.48.
A '60s era Hemi musclecar with 4.11s would have overall 1st gear ratio of 10.19, or 2.8% LESS torque multiplication than the 300C!!
We haven't even talked about 2nd gear in the MB supplied transmission.
And we also need to stop the personal sniping. If you don't like something you read here, you can skip it or you can email me about it. Attacking someone is out of line.
Thanks - if anyone has any questions or comments, please email me (don't post them here).
Now, back to the 300 ...
Thanks
I received the R&T supplement in the mail Saturday. I came home from work in the afternoon and my sister's boyfriend was reading it. We were just talking about the car the night before, so I wondered where he got it. He said it just showed up in the mail. I haven't had a chance to do anything but glance through it, but I thought it was pretty cool that this thing just showed up!
Went to the Premier last Thursday. Dealer only had a Touring edition in Magnesium. I honestly thought it was Jade on the showroom floor, it looked kinda green--maybe a reflection in the color from plants or something, anyway I thought it was the Jade. Saw it again today when my M was in for service. It was outside in front of the showroom. Thought the Magnesium color looked kinda washed out in sunlight, compared to my platinum M and a graphite colored 1500 Hemi truck they had on the floor. Anyway, no rides on Premier nite, but no big deal because I wasn't interested in a 3.5 ride anyway. The C they expected was sitting on a rail car in Nashville and they couldn't get it. I sat in it and the interior was ok, nothing special, nothing bad. The seats seemed to have less of a thigh bolster than my M. The telescoping wheel looks like it will be a plus. The sill at the bottom of the doors sticks out about 1/2"-3/4" and collects run-off dirt when it rains. We had big storms over the weekend and the car must have been outside. The body showed no residual dirt, but the sills below the door got filthy. Strange that they are not flush, unless this one had a bad fit and finish. lol. As I looked at the car for an extended time waiting for my M to get the lube service done, I just did not get it. The M is way better looking IMHO, and in person, to me, the new car did not look better than the pics. It looked the same to me. A big old MB brougham sedan from the 70's with a Studebaker Lark grill from the 60's stuck in the front. Sorry, no relation to the Chronos that I could see. I hope for DC's sake that the car does well, but honestly, I just don't get it. However, there were a lot of "old" people at the Premier that seemed interested in it. Thank God I'm only 62 and not one of them. lol
> Has anybody seen this car in the lava red and how does it look.
"Deep Lava Red" is dark maroon, much darker than the name would suggest.
> I am a little confused about the comments regarding the size of the vehicle. The 300's size is right in line with the Chevy Impala and the Nissan Maxima. I think it is the styling of the vehicle that gives it such a large and robust look.
The overall length is about the same for these three vehicles, but the 300's 120" wheelbase is significantly longer than the other two. The track is a bit wider too.
> do any of the owners have adjustable pedals? If so, are they tied to the seat memory?
$175 option on the 300C. Power pedals are a $125 option on V6 models, so presumably the extra 50 bucks on the 300C is for the memory.
> Also, are the outside mirrors connected to the memory as well? Is the steering wheel's position tied to it?
Yes, on the 300C only.
> Query, where exactly is the subwoofer? It's centrally located on the dash.
> BTW, the sub is in the rear deck, I'm 99% sure, not the dash. The center speaker in the dash has to do with the 5.1 sound ... again about 99% sure.
The grill in the middle of the dash is for the "fill" speaker. This area is empty on cars without the subwoofer option.
> The light grey interior looks fantastic, but the carpets are almost white. I'm concerned about dirt, mud, snow, etc. Do you guys have opinions?
I've had light tan carpeting, and as long as you use floor mats you should be ok. You might get salt stains in the winter if you live in an area where it snows a lot, but in my experience they wash out with a little 'Spray And Wash.' Tar is about the only thing that will do them permament damage.
> Dealer only had a Touring edition in Magnesium. I honestly thought it was Jade on the showroom floor, it looked kinda green--maybe a reflection in the color from plants or something, anyway I thought it was the Jade.
I've seen both colors outside, but not side by side. The Jade is basically silver with a green tint. Magnesium is medium gray with a cyan (blue/green) tint. I rather like this color -- it looks greenish-gray in the sunlight, and blueish-gray in the shade. It's darker than Jade
If you buy early, be sure to check the leading edge of the hood where it meets the grill. One of the of the cars I looked at had a gap so large that I could get a finger in there. Also, get down eye-level with the grill and make sure the hood lines up with the front of the car.
The paint is probably not going to get any better. I've seen bad paint jobs on new 7-series BMWs, so I don't hold out much hope for Chrysler. One nice thing, the black paint on the 300 has some fleck in it, which helps hide the orange peel.
yeah, orange peel paint is an industry wide problem imo...
even my so called high quality honda suffers from it. i suspect that most people don't even really know what orange peel paint is. anyway, it seems to me that it's more noticeable on dark colours...
I have no clue on the Integity's but I wouldn't dismiss them without some research. I've had some OEM Michelins that didn't impress me either, but I don't disregard the entire line-up.
I really like this car, but the colors available leave me flat. Saw black and the funky magnesium color.
Would really like something like the Butane Blue I saw on a Pacifica parked next to the magnesium 300. Oh, IMHO, the magnesium apears to have a green component to the color when viewed outdoors in the sun.
actually the C rear axle ratio is 2.82:1 making the overall ratio in 1st 10.12:1. anyway, what seems to be lost in the conversation comparing the new hemi to the 426 is that the new hemi is a relatively short stroke...and therefore its max hp and torque are somewhat high on the rpm scale. the old elephant engine was also quite a bit larger and was rated like 425 hp and 475 lb/ft of torque. this is significantly more than the new 345 cube hemi. so, should the new hemi feel exatly like the 426...NO! but, will the new 6.1l hemi in the srt versions feel more like the old 426? it just might. given the 5.7l's deceptively impressive performance, one has to wonder what the 6.1l will bring to the game?
Unfortunately, 215/65-17 is an uncommon tire size. The only other tire tirerack.com lists in this size is the Continental ContiTouringContact CT95 (optional with the side air bag package), which appears to be at least as bad as the Goodyear Integrity. It came in dead last in the "Standard Touring All-season" group -- 35th place out of 35 tires -- and got a 5.0 out of 10 rating from 32 reviewers.
yeah, i'm not entirely sure if the 426 ratings were gross hp or not. i know chrysler street rated 426s were listed as having 425 hp and 490 lb/ft of torque by chrysler. and according to many, chrysler was low balling even that number...! plus what folks who are comparing the new hemi and old hemi need to realize is that the 426 was developed for racing...the 5.7l was not.
The 5.7's 340 hp is in a very mild state of tune. Popular Hotrodding Magazine recently did an insightful article on the excellent design of the new Hemi -- everything from intake flow to the materials used in the pistons. They raved about the 5.7's robust construction and well-thought features.
Interestingly, although the 426 was rated at 425 gross horsepower at 5000 rpm, Hotrod Magazine found that it could be wound to 6500 rpm, where made about 525 hp. This article was done around 1977, and the writer stated, "A stock hemi could make the rated 425 hp with a plug wire pulled." LOL! It was an absolute monster of an engine, and very well engineered. Today we have different priorities.
Now remember my question about interior colors? I saw just ONE response. Are my questions that bad? I'm really interested to know whether 300 buyers are leaning heavily toward the light or dark interior.