Give it a C-minus

By DAN NEIL

April 28, 2004 12 AM PT

With the arrival of the new Chrysler 300, the phrase “base model” will henceforth live in infamy.

Not the Hemi-powered 300C, the 340-horsepower chunk of burning love that lives at the top of the model line, which can price out at near $40,000 and is equipped with salient features such as a five-speed automatic transmission, 18-inch alloy wheels and bits of retro fairy dust such as a faux tortoise-shell steering wheel rim. The 300C is the car you see lording over the streets of Los Angeles from 40-foot billboards, the car you see filleting California canyons on the new television ads. You will know it by its asterisk, beside which says, “Optional equipment shown.”

The 300C may be a very fine car. I don’t know. I have only driven its stunted cousin.

The car I mean is the 2005 Chrysler “300” -- the base model tellingly bereft of a letter designation. Not Hemi-powered but demi-powered, the 300 comes with an overmatched 2.7-liter, 200-hp V6 left to struggle like Cuchulan against the sea with the car’s 3,711-pound mass. The 300C cracks off 0-60 mph acceleration in 5.3 seconds; the letter-less 300 reaches the same speed in 10.7 seconds and busts a prodigious gut in the process.

I rented the base 300 model on a recent business trip to Washington, and the experience left me miffed and mystified. This is product planning of a very curious sort. Chrysler has stair-cased the 300 into four distinct models: the base model, the 300 ($23,595); the Touring ($27,395) and Limited ($29,890), both equipped with the familiar 3.5-liter, 250-hp SOHC V6; and the line-’em-up, rat-a-tat-tat 300C Hemi ($32,995), powered by a 5.7-liter Hemi V8. That product spread means the 300 competes against everything from a Honda Accord and Pontiac Grand Prix (four-door V6 under $25,000) to the Mercury Marauder (full-size rear wheel drive performance sedan over $30,000).

The base model -- a stripper -- has a couple of reasons for being. First, its low entry price will bring the damp-behind-the-ears to the showrooms. Second, the 300 -- with its limp, dallying 2.7-liter V6 -- will ameliorate Chrysler’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers. But the car feels less like a stripped down model than a counterfeit, a plug-nickel version of the 300. At the base trim level, anti-lock brakes, traction and stability control, side air bags, and a number of other concessions to comfort and safety, routinely available as standard equipment on import competitors, are either cost-added options or not available.

I understand there are some very smart people at DaimlerChrysler -- many with thick German accents -- who have worked the numbers and concluded the company needs such a car in the mix. I just don’t get it.

In any event, this thing will see more fleet sales than a Marseilles brothel.

The 300 is an interesting product, no doubt about it. It casts a moist, nostalgic eye back to Chrysler’s hyperventilating V8 “letter cars” of the 1950s and ‘60s.

Replacing the cab-forward, front-drive Dodge Intrepid and Chrysler Concorde, the 300 and the Magnum RT touring wagon are the first full-size, rear-wheel-drive sedans to come from Auburn Hills in decades. The cars help themselves to the Mercedes E-class’ independent suspension underpinnings ; this fall the cars will be available with the Benz all-wheel-drive 4Matic system.

Another fun fact: the 5.7-liter Hemi engine is equipped with a really trick variable-displacement system that shuts down four cylinders out of eight under light throttle, giving the 300C an EPA mileage rating of 17/25 city/highway, this despite the 300C’s anvil-like aerodynamics.

The 300 also marks the company’s return to a certain kind of joyous insolence and hammy swagger. Get a load of the bigger-than-life, expressive and chancy styling, with the Virgil Exner grille, the long hood, a greenhouse like a Verdun pillbox and the square proportions of an overturned Subzero freezer. The Green Hornet called: He wants his car back.

If you are looking for visual antecedents you would have to go to the pulp comics of the 1930s and ‘40s, when Gothic, high-sided limos and getaway cars sped through Chester Gould’s “Dick Tracy” or Bob Kane’s “Batman” trailing speed lines from panel to panel. The same stylized treatment turned the comics’ auto-loading pistols into huge, blocky gats from which muzzle fire endlessly blossomed.

The cars in the comics were fantasies, of course, impossibly sleek and imposing versions of real cars, drawn so as to express the moral dimensions and pitched battle of the heroes and villains. The 300’s styling brings these fantasies to life and with them their malevolent mood.

This is gangsta, old school. With shoulders as high and flat as Alan Ladd’s suit in “The Glass Key” and a roofline drawn as low and menacingly as the brim of his fedora, the 300 has a distinctly film noir presence.

Dub Nation couldn’t ask for a better car to pimp out. The car has already made a runway turn in a 50 Cent video. And it seems pretty obvious that the oversized, flared wheel arches are intended to accommodate much larger rims and tires. The biggest wheels available from the factory -- the 18-inch alloys on the 300C -- are lost in the wheel openings, which is why the car, with all its slab-sided brio, looks top heavy. Put some 22s on this thing and you’ll have something.

With all the concerted gray matter devoted to the 300, I could scarcely have imagined that the base model would be so spectacularly indifferent. Or so luridly slow. My first merge onto Highway 66 from Dulles International was a life-before-my-eyes bit of cinema illuminated by high-intensity headlights bearing down. I matted the throttle to summon the whole 190 pound-feet of torque and the V6 seemed like it was going to herniate itself (the official curb weight of 3,711 pounds seems highly suspect).

The Mercedes-derived suspension delivered a smooth ride, but I suspect most of the credit should go to the 17-inch tires with their high, cushy sidewalls (how long, I wonder, before someone puts a set of old-fashioned whitewalls on this car, like spats?). Unfortunately, these same tires offered little grip when the car was pitched into a corner, and the sidewall deflection gave the car a squirmy feeling, a tail-wagging hysteresis (the mechanical difference between cause, i.e., steering input, and effect, sidewall loading and unloading). On a straight bit of road, I tugged the wheel left and right and the 300 sashayed like Veronica Lake through a hotel lobby.

When bigger g-forces began to affect the car, the suspension just seemed to give up and go home. The body motions were loose and wallowing -- very much the Weebles-wobble-but-they-don’t-fall-down sensation.

I certainly hope the 18-inch tires and “touring” suspension on the 300C is a night-and-day difference, because this car does not feel particularly safe at highway speeds. I don’t understand how it got by the chassis dynamics people.

Meanwhile, there was a big rattle behind the instrument panel (the car had 2,500 miles on it when I got it) and a huge gap between hood and fender.

Oh, and by the way, the brakes were awful too.

I understand, in cars, you get what you pay for, but in the 300, you pay for what you don’t pay for, too. It’s a big, comfortable, cool-looking car, and I’m not prepared to write off the 300 without testing the 300C Hemi or the Magnum RT with all-wheel drive, which on paper looks like a car I’d spend my own money on.

But right now, I’m pretty disappointed. Bring me a drink, doll face. Leave the bottle.

2005 Chrysler 300

Wheelbase: 120 inches

Length: 197 inches

Curb weight: 3,711 pounds

Powertrain: 2.7-liter DOHC V6, four-speed automatic, 3.90 axle ratio, rear wheel drive.

Horsepower: 200 hp at 5,800 rpm.

Torque: 190 pound-feet at 4,850

Acceleration: 0 to 60 mph in 10.7 seconds

Price, base: $23,595 (including $695 delivery)

Price, as tested: $24,620.

Final thoughts: Mother always said never date a stripper