In the middle of last summer, our evergreen 2015 Chrysler 300 SRT went to the dealer for minor service as well as its bi-annual warranty replacement for the carbon-fibre door trim.
Fiat-Chrysler has a notorious reputation when it comes to reliability and build quality. But right off the bat, we’ll be the first ones to say that we highly recommend the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger twins, and everyone who bought one after reading our reviews are very content. We’ve had our Chrysler 300 SRT for almost 3 years now. The car has been mechanically and electrically reliable for the most part, except for one nagging issue that no amount of warranty work is solving — the same small bits of interior trim keep falling off, again and again, twice every summer.
Our cars are parked on the street. As much as people like to baby their cars, some of us truly have no time to fiddle with microfibre cloths or doddle around at manual car washes. So we do what the majority of people do — get a dude to clean it. These dudes use dirty cloths and muddy waters, but there’s not much you can do about it unless you like sitting and supervising these things. Regular paint protection loses its shine in months and barely lasts a year, as per our experience. So we decided to try out the new-fangled “nano-ceramic”
Our Chrysler 300 SRT, which we bought a couple of months ago, had actually gone for its first service just before we bought it, while it was still under the previous owner’s name. We paid for it ourselves, so here are some of the costs associated with owning an SRT.
Yep, we’ve bought yet another car, adding to our ever-expanding self-owned long-term fleet. We hyped it long enough on our Facebook page where we asked our fans to guess the car, and it was great fun watching the comments pour in. This here is a 2015 Chrysler 300 SRT in a rare red colour, and in full-option trim — so fully-optioned, that you won’t find this specification at all dealers as it was originally custom-ordered.
Here are the recalls that occurred during the month of February.
When we drove the redesigned second-gen Chrysler 300C about four years back, we wanted to like the car, but it was a bit of a boat in terms of handling, even though its sister-model, the Dodge Charger, was a pretty decent corner-carver. Fast-forward to 2015, and the Chrysler 300 range has received a facelift to inject some aggression into the car’s overall character. And there’s a new trim level — the Chrysler 300S.
Guess what? We’re special. Special enough that Chrysler is offering a car here that is not offered in North America. The 2016 Chrysler 300 SRT is still built there, but will only go on sale in a handful of overseas markets such as South Africa, Australia and Japan as well as all the GCC countries. And we got our hands on a fresh example.
Chrysler have taken off the covers for the 2015 300 and 300C at the 2014 LA Auto Show. It gets a lot of subtle visual updates and the interior has been improved as well.
It would be surprising if anyone remembers Lancia in the UAE. The semi-premium division of Fiat, nestled between Fiat And Alfa Romeo, Lancia is still alive in Europe, even though the brand stopped selling cars here once Fiat temporarily left the GCC market in the earlier part of this decade. There was a time when Lancias were uniquely-designed cars whose quirkiness was a trademark. But now that Fiat has bought out a part of Chrysler, the new Lancia range is looking all too familiar.