SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We get noticed in the 2012 Chrysler 300C 3.0 diesel

Needs a chauffeur

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday December 12, 2012

Everyone notices the Chrysler 300C. Car guards and school kids just want one, shoppers in supermarket parking lots stare hungrily, the manager of a popular Thai-style restaurant offered to “look after” the test car while your writer and companions had lunch and a fellow scribe said, “Nice car, but for the money, I’d rather have a Mercedes.” That’s an interesting comment, but why?

It’s built on the Chrysler LX platform that just happens to incorporate Mercedes-Benz W220 S-class front suspension, the W211 E-class’ five-link rear setup and the same car’s differential and ESP. By the way the five-speed, W5A580 electronically controlled automatic transmission is known as 5-Gmatic in another application. Just thought we’d mention it.

The car was extensively restyled in 2011, gaining new headlamps with LED daytime running strips, a restyled grille with updated Chrysler emblem and new tail lights with LEDs. Thinner roof pillars and a more raked windscreen contribute to improved visibility. Interior changes include a new instrument panel, soft-touch materials throughout, and a new steering wheel and centre console. Both seat-mounted and curtain side airbags were made standard.

No longer sourced from Chrysler’s previous de-facto owner, its 3.0-litre diesel engine is a VM Motori unit provided by technological partner Fiat. Then one needs to ask whether our journalistic friend could actually get a three-litre turbodiesel car, with as much kit as this one has, from the German company at a similar price? Not easily, Helmut.

Equipment that’s included in the basic price is a choice of either black or mochachino leather upholstery with 12-way adjustable, heated and cooled front seats, heated back seats with 60:40 split, climate control, an almost-full length sunroof, heated steering wheel, an 8,4-inch touchscreen to control the infotainment system with its voice-to-text messaging and Garmin satnav, music kit with USB, auxiliary and SD card sockets, powered “everything” including steering wheel adjustment, and an onboard computer.

Safety items include uprated brakes with high-performance pads, seven intelligent, multistage airbags, ABS brakes that use the ESP to detect rough roads and wet ones and compensate accordingly, braking assistance and Ready Alert Braking (aka “Pre-safe”), a reversing camera and hill holder. Optional safety items read like a brochure from those Germans too, with adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, blind spot monitoring, and rear cross path detection that tells you when it’s safe to back out of a parking bay.

Apart from its ‘gangsta’ presence and unique appearance, what’s it like to drive? Put simply, it’s big, solid, quiet, powerful and rather conservatively styled inside. The boot is Mafia-big, there is plenty of interior space and it parks amazingly easily. The front doors open really wide and here’s where we get to Spouse’s only negative comment: “This thing needs a chauffeur to close the door behind you,” she said. If you’re inside and the door is still open, you either stretch out beyond your comfort zone to reach it, or exit to grab and haul it back with you.

Apart from that, it’s a grand car. Couldn’t live with one though – we're much too shy.

The numbers:
Price: R539 990
Engine: 2987 cc, DOHC, 24-valve, 60-degree V6, turbodiesel
Power: 176 kW at 4000 rpm
Torque: 550 Nm between 1800 and 2800 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 7,8 seconds
Maximum speed: 232 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 8,8 l/100 km
Tank: 72 litres
Fuel: 50-ppm diesel
Warranty and maintenance plan: 3 years/100 000 km



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

Comments?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you thoroughly disagree with what I say? That's your privilege, because if everybody agreed on everything, the world would be a boring place. All I ask is that you remain calm, so please blow off a little steam before venting too vigorously.