| Road Test Chrysler 300C 3.0 V6 CRD |
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The One You've Been Waiting For
Picture the scene. The hills of North Wales in the autumn, a gentle breeze breathing up through the sunlit golden woods that line the flanks of the Horseshoe valley, an empty B-road snaking along the line of the river before rising up the hillside to emerge into the bracken and slate moorland of the high tops. There's a car hammering up the hill. A gunmetal grey saloon, square and solid looking with double twin headlamps and a gaping grille. It looks like a Bentley Arnage but with a more focussed expression of intent, a lower roof-line and wider flared wheel-arches. It's accelerating round a long sweeping curve, climbing towards the clear blue sky, the rising note trumpeting from its twin exhaust ports suggests no signs of stress in the engine, the suspension holding it just off the level as its Pirelli P7s cling tight to the damp tarmac. That's me in the heated leather driving seat with a big grin on my face. I'm feeding 218bhp to the back wheels through a five-speed automatic gearbox, being hauled ever quicker up the slope by 376lb/ft of torque. This car is giving me everything I've ever wanted from a saloon and it's hard to believe it's finally here. It does the sprint to 62mph in 7.6 seconds, it'll keep accelerating uphill to well beyond the national speed limit, it returns an official average of almost 35mpg, it's big enough to take five adults the length of the country in comfort and it looks even classier than the Arnage which costs more than six times as much.
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