My time with the final 2023 Chrysler 300C was all too brief. Rendezvous on Friday night, back to reality on Monday morning. This has been such a tumultuous, bittersweet, short-lived, and above all surprising tryst that I’ve been left reeling. I’ve been so desperate to feel something, and this silly old car gave me that, even if it promptly took it away.
Okay, let’s backpedal. We gotta start somewhere.
Chrysler used to be a fascinating brand. It was a company run by engineers, whose prime targets were innovation and elegance. They pioneered so many innovations that we take for granted today, that I could write a whole separate article about it. Along with rubber engine mounts and twist-to-start ignition — that used to be a feature — one of their better-known achievements is the “Hemi” engine. It debuted all the way back in 1955, in the beautiful, luxurious, and fast Chrysler 300.
The 300 grew and changed every year, with each new body getting a new letter designation, from B all the way to L in 1965. Our test car resurrects the dormant 300C badge, both as a nod to the first modern Chrysler 300C in 2005, and as an homage to the 1957 Chrysler 300C — which bore a 392 cubic-inch Hemi V8, just like the brand new and already deceased car I had the enormous privilege of playing with for a weekend.
You read that right: as a sweet send-off for this final 300C, the Mopar madmen stuffed the 392 cubic-inch — or 6.4-litre — V8 from the Challenger and Charger into this body as a heroic last-gasp for the 300. Every car comes with this 485-horsepower engine, routed to the rear wheels through the perennially perfect ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic transmission, plus 20-inch wheels, adaptive suspension, and big Brembo brakes all lifted directly from the spicy-spec Challengers and Chargers.
There are no option boxes to tick. Every 300C comes loaded to the gills with heated and ventilated seats, adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, a panoramic moonroof that obliterates rear-seat headroom, black Laguna leather with white stitching, and a 19-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system with a big subwoofer. The only choice you get is paint: red, white, or black. Only 200 of the cars scheduled to roll out of the Brampton assembly plant will stay in Canada … and I really want one of them. This one.
I don’t know how this emotional response happened. I reviewed the 392-powered, six-speed-manual Challenger and came away with mixed feelings. I sampled (and adored) the Charger Hellcat as well, and so I was expecting more of the same. Mechanically, the 300C is kind of the same, but it hit differently and I don’t know why, but what I do know is that I don’t want to give it back. I haven’t been this anxious about a Monday morning since I was an anxiety-addled teenager. I liked those cars, but I need this. Let’s try and break down why.
First off, I’ve always had a soft spot for badass sedans. I didn’t have a Lamborghini on my bedroom wall as a kid, but I did have a Mercury Marauder and a Mercedes-Benz S600. Both were enormous, imposing, gangster-tier sedans draped in gloss black paint, because of course they were. Of the 10-ish cars I’ve owned, more than half have been big, relatively fast, stealthy four-doors, so it stands to reason that I’d be drawn to the suit-and-tie 300 over its letterman-jacket Chally and Charger siblings.
It looks so good. I’m very over the black-on-black-on-black color scheme that so many cars are cursed with, but this 300 wears it like James Bond wears a tux — it just looks right. Brawny, broad shouldered, and subtly menacing, with a long hood and short rear end, with a distinct character line rising across the profile of the silhouette, augmented by very subtle fins atop the fenders.
The 300 has always been a good-looking car, but this one, with its big wheels hiding purposeful red brake calipers and massive discs, is delicious. An offset tri-colored 300C badge proudly adorns the black mesh grille instead of the usual Chrysler wings; it’s a nice, classic touch. It may be an old design — this generation debuted all the way back in 2011 — but it still has more presence than just about anything else you can buy.
The interior is a classic touch, too, for better or worse. Chrysler’s UConnect infotainment is displayed on a relatively small eight-inch touchscreen, but it still looks good and avoids being frustrating to use. The seats are lifted directly from its siblings, and are fantastically comfortable and supportive. Visibility is okay, trunk space is good, rear-seat accommodations leave a lot to be desired, and the Harmon Kardon sound system is probably technically inferior to the Bowers & Wilkins Diamond systems I’ve been spoiled with, but it sounds warm and thumps hard, and that’s all I want.
It’s critical that the sound system has a ton of might behind it, as it needs to be able to keep up with this car’s thunderous exhaust system. Like the Challenger 392, the 300C is set up with a raucous, free-flowing beacon of bastardry as a means of exhaling, with no active valves or quiet modes. It fires up with a massive baritone bellow, and doesn’t really mellow out after that. You can drive it unobtrusively, sure, but it’s never quiet, with the deep eight-cylinder warble always very present in the background or foreground, depending on how heavy your foot is.
I cannot emphasize enough what the noise this engine produces does for the 300C’s character. It’s the exact same as the Challenger I reviewed, but I expected that kind of loudness of something also visually loud like that car. This is different, this is surprising, and it’s a glorious, badass backing vocal for something so visually sinister.
A lot of reviewers talk about what a car sounds like at full song, and the 300C definitely delivers on that front with its NASCAR-dubbed soundtrack, but where it really shines in my eyes is around town. Its lopey, low-speed tremor that only a big, aggressively tuned pushrod V8 can deliver is like nothing else you can buy. The Lexus IS 500 comes very close, but it’s not the same barrel chested whump of the 300C’s Hemi.
Also similar to the IS 500 are the driver controls — refreshingly relaxed, organic, and bereft of artificial urgency. Steering is a touch slow and deliberate at higher speeds, as it doesn’t try to hide the 300C’s heft, but it’s still plenty communicative. Braking is firm and linear, with no noticeable fade in my brief romp with it. Ride comfort from the adaptive shocks is similarly well-gauged, being generally taut and well-controlled, compliant around town and able to be dialed up when the situation calls for it.
Where the 300C has a distinct leg up on the Lexus is its powertrain response. They both benefit hugely from a mechanical limited-slip differential for casual sideways antics, but the “Torqueflite” — a reference to another Chrysler innovation — ZF-derived eight-speed gearbox in the 300 is on another level. It instantaneously pivots between being the doughy slushbox you’d expect from an old Chrysler, and a hooligan-spec race box, viciously banging through gears with reckless abandon. The only powertrain combination on Earth that’s more fun to mat the skinny pedal in, is the force-fed, demonic varietal of the same thing.
But then again, as much as I admired the Charger Hellcat, it’s too much. I know it’s too much. The Challenger 392 was sweet, but the dull response from its DIY manual transmission put it into an awkward, uncanny valley of almost-but-not-quite that ruined it for me, and I’ve always been conflicted about its on-the-nose retro styling. This 300C fixes all of that, with its less-unreasonable naturally aspirated engine, brilliant gearbox to manage it, and sinuously sexy styling to pull it all together.
It’s unusual that a car puts me into a state where I can’t pull myself together and stop gushing. It’s a precious privilege to review something that I don’t want to give back. In this era where everything feels numb, looks like nothing, and more often than not makes no song at all, the final 2023 Chrysler 300C is a revelation that I never want to let go of. I’ve become so desperate to feel something, anything, and the 300C comes along with a solution for that I could feasibly live with. I’ve let myself become hopelessly infatuated with it, just in time for it to be terminated. Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
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