Photo of the day: the last Chrysler 300C rolled off the assembly line

Over the past few years, Chrysler has produced essentially only two families of models: the 300 sedans, as well as the Pacifica and Voyager minivans (the latter being just a slightly simplified Pacifica). And if the middle-aged Pacifica, which was released in 2017, has not yet become so outdated that it begins to seriously lose to its competitors in terms of sales volumes, then the Chrysler 300 sedans, despite the formal generation change at the end of 2010, have managed to do so – they are holding on. since the beginning of 2004. Even if we count from the debut of the current model, which largely repeated its predecessor in the first half of the 2000s, the Chrysler 300C is a real old-timer in the American automobile industry. And his days, alas, are numbered.

The Chrysler company, part of the Stellantis alliance, is one of the most problematic divisions of the concern: the brand has been on the verge of extinction for many years, but the leadership of the parent auto giant has repeatedly given its word that Chrysler will live as part of the new hierarchy of brands. Despite the promise to save the long-suffering American company, there are still no new production models in its range, and the old ones are simply becoming history. This is what happened with the Chrysler 300C sedan – the top version of the standard 300 model, which will follow the flagship into retirement by the end of the year. Yes, she doesn’t have long left either.

The Chrysler 300C was a real hit in the mid-2000s, and at first these cars were in high demand not only in the home American market, but also here – these sedans were sold in Russia for quite a long time, but not so many modernized second-generation cars were brought to us : The lion’s share of sales came from the pre-reform model. Over the past ten years, the once popular “300” sold in modest numbers, but Chrysler management was in no hurry to discontinue the model – as a result, the sedan remained on the assembly line until the end of 2023.

Despite its age, the old sedan’s final year of sales went quite well: in September last year, Chrysler finally returned a modification with a 6.4-liter Hemi V8 engine to the lineup. The farewell special version had a circulation of two thousand cars for the USA and Canada, but it sold out in less than 12 hours! In a word, the Chrysler 300C left on the rise – the last dark cherry-colored copy produced at the Canadian plant in Brampton was released with this particular engine under the hood.

The production of regular Chrysler 300 sedans will also be discontinued by the end of the month, and then only the Pacifica minivan (and its budget brother Voyager, which is formally separated into a separate model) will remain in the lineup of the once glorious American brand. The future of the company has still not been determined: the management of the concern only mentioned that by 2030, Chrysler, in accordance with the Dare Forward corporate electrification plan, will almost completely get rid of cars with internal combustion engines.

Let us recall that the ambitious Dare Forward program implies that by the end of the decade the share of sales of electric vehicles of the Stellantis alliance in the United States will reach 50 percent of the concern’s total sales, and in Europe it will completely abandon models with internal combustion engines. Although the company does not rule out that these plans may be revised next year: elections to the European Parliament and the presidential race in the United States are approaching – they say, a lot depends on their results.