Lunaviney

Lunaviney’s Search for Automotive Heaven

Chapter 2: Chrysler 300Cheap

The Chrysler 300C is a car I’ve spent a lot of time with. Daily driving one for a year of study I got to personally know all the ins and out of it. The 300 I lived with was a 07 with a van diesel engine, the mighty 3 liter OM642 turbo diesel commonly found in the Sprinter.

But lets start from the beginning. The 300C was developed during the Daimler Chrysler era of the company. Built on the LX Platform, a compilation of ‘’the worst of Mercedes’’. The beast that is the 300C was unveiled to the masses 2003, with a styling to bring back the glory days with the old 300 Chryslers featuring a gigantic grille and all the best contemporary American luxury and performance to boot. But the goodness ends at the looks, especially the station wagon version with its sleek shooting break style roof line looks fantastic. Too bad once you start driving it, you will figure out quite fast, that the car is unbelievably poor. Partly due to sharing a lot of components with some of the weakest machines in Mercedes rich alumni, and in other part just being Chrysler’s questionable build quality. Its so sad really, if it drove as good as it looks, it would’ve been a classic.

As for the drivey bits, this sauerkraut bigmac of a machine feels very floppy to drive. Its shockingly uncomfortable on any surface you could think to put it on, even velvet smooth tarmac makes it flop aimlessly around the road like fish out of water. The OM642 TD V6 engine doesn’t help either with its magnificently uninteresting engine note. It does accelerate pretty well when you try to overtake someone, it is a Merc engine after all. But the 5G Tronic lurks over your trip like an evil stepmother. I’m not sure if its how it is normally or it was just for this very car but the gearbox was hideous. It either changed gears on pure guess or not at all. Especially when climate as is the yearly tradition, over here, becomes slightly cold. It just gave up all together. Shining light upon another huge problem with it, namely the traction control. I’m not sure if its a Mercedes unit, or a Chrysler unit, but its programmed with the most hardcore daddy kinks you could imagine. With the slightest slippery spot on the road it whips you in order with the force of a demigod punching you in the stomach. You can’t even to my knowledge turn it off completely so your best bet is to be daddy’s little girl and drive it at the speed of snail taking a bath in molasses. Which is for the best as it just tends to lose all its grip just by looking at the accelerator pedal.

Moving on to the interior, things doesn’t improve much. Its a buffet of cheap nasty plastics, just surrounding you like a tomb of gray depression. The instrument cluster inlays are clearly pieces of white paper, backlit with a green bulb. Giving you a retina poisoning dishwater green glow at all times. The interiors centerpiece is an analogue clock in the middle of a big silver plastic slab, so cheap that would make even Wish.com think: ‘’hey that’s too cheap, mate’’. The cheap feeling carries on to pretty much every switch in the car. It feels a lot like you’re about to poke a hole through the dashboard if you get the slightest idea of operating them. The heater takes a calendar year to start blowing hot air into your hypothermia riddled face, but the AC works wonders. So that’s something! The boot is deceptively small if you ever have the need to use the station wagon as, well a station wagon. If you happen to know that you’re the type of person who would have great use for a big plentiful ass to put things in your car, get a Volvo.

Moving on to the exterior before finishing this review up. Being an early noughties Mercedes product, there will be rust. Quite a lot of rust as well. This one wasn’t that bad. It did start rusting quite badly around the rear wiper and in classic Merc spirits, around the wheel arches. So watch out for that if you suddenly find yourself buying one, as they’ve started becoming quite cheap.

In summary, this is basically a 90s Mercedes, built by a company with a budget of 2 cents and a burger coupon, and it really feels. Just buy a broken one and enjoy those gorgeous looks. Which will also spare you the trouble when it breaks, of course.

PS, I swear the next one will be less negative.

Lunaviney’s search for automotive heaven. Review 1: Subaru Outback 2004

This mighty boxer engined Subaru Outback was once a proud and mighty japanese beast of the road, no matter the surface. Now it feels weak and broken. All though the 2.5 flat 4 still has some nice pep, the rest of the car seem to have lived a life of abuse. Which certainly isn’t unheard of when its a Subaru of any kind. Its done 38000 presumably very hard kilometers (Or 234000 miles).

But in the spirit of strucuality lets start with the cosmetics. This particular example looks pretty fresh. Its not overly rusted but, its a Subaru, theres no nice way of putting how ugly it is. The headlights are both look annoyed and bulgy giving it this really derpy angry face. Coupled with the aggressive engine note the Subaru Outback comes across as a very angry car. A feeling that keeps going once you’re inside the unbelievably hard seats. The steering wheel tries to feel sporty with pistol grippy race look and the just look of the materials. No such thing as comfortable plastic wood in there. The quality of the interior feels solid enough for what its supposed to be but it also feels very unexciting and boring. The infotainment unit on this car was also knackered, the screen was flickering badly and the Menu and Nav buttons turned it off completely. The stereo was good enough to produce a pleasant background noise atleast.

But its  Subaru so the reason why you’d ever buy one is the drivey bits and they are as expected bloody fantastic. The flat 4, 2.5l engine feels annoyed about its general existence. It wants to punch something and you’re its companion for its noble quest of violence. Though its punchyness was slightly spoiled in this car due to someone mating the angry engine to a lazy and bored 4 speed automatic. It felt rather slow and harsh with its gear changes. Quite possible just because I’m so used to my Buicks TH400s perfect smoothness. The good old Subaru AWD is as always great. Especially for the roads in my local area. Too bad the entire car gets spoiled by the automatic gearbox really.