Gadgetory

a big American luxury sedan 20-inch wheels and beats by dre on the stereo it doesn't get much more imported from Detroit than this Chrysler 300s will pop behind the wheel of this 2014 model and check the tech this is a luxury sedan so it's no surprise that the interior is nicely appointed there are a couple of spots here and there where it kind of seems like Craigslist cheaped out a little bit on the material but in general everywhere that you the driver come into contact with this vehicle steering wheel particularly these blue leather seats that are going to match nicely with our jazz blue exterior they all feel really good and well put together now one point that you come into contact with a car regularly that I don't really like is this electronic shifter now it looks like your standard t shape shifter but instead of staying where you put it it actually returns to neutral once you've pulled it down into reverse or to drive kind of like BMWs do and it's a little bit difficult to tell exactly what year you're going to land in if you have to quickly for example go from Drive to reverse when parallel parking more often than not you end up in neutral or even worse in park one of the parts of this vehicle that stands out the most is the standard at this S trim level beatsaudio system it's got those big red B badges on all the speakers its 552 wide spread through about 10 speakers including one subwoofer in the trunk and it's a pretty good sounding system I know beats gets a bit of a bad rap for being not very good founding for as much as they cost but in this car it's pretty good mix in the dashboard we've got Chrysler's UConnect 8.4 infotainment system and it looks like all of the UConnect systems we've seen across the Chrysler brand but they're not all created equally this is actually an earlier version of the software I believe and what leads me to believe that is that the rerouting algorithms on this seem to take about twice as long as they did in the Dodge vehicles that we've driven recently which actually do have the newest version of you connect this car is also lacking the sort of in-car Wi-Fi hotspot' a lot of the UConnect s the actual connected part of you can now under the hood this 300 s is going to be powered by a 300 horsepower version of Chrysler's 3.6 liter v6 engine it's a couple of extra ponies over the standard 300 thanks to a sport exhaust now this is paired with an 8-speed automatic transmission this is a good gearbox it gives us good crisp shifts that are quick but they're also smooth it's not a lot of jerking around of the vehicle when you're changing gears with these paddle shifters now the 3.6 is only available with this 8-speed automatic if you jump up to the v8 you actually drop down to a I think a 5-speed automatic transmission that's not that great if you have to have your v8 that's definitely a time you're going to want to wait for next year's 2015 model because it's going to be upgraded with that 8-speed automatic also it's going to help it get a little bit better fuel economy as well okay let's price this 2014 Chrysler 300 s 34 395 is going to get you out of the door on this s model which is about middle of the range but we've got a couple of options that are going to be we're considering the first is going to be that you connect navigation system which is good for getting you from point A to point B but we're pretty sure is going to be improved next year so if that's what you're looking for maybe hold off for a little bit we've also got a safety tech package that's looking a little bit spark store car of this model year add a couple extra odds and ends and we're looking at an as-tested price of forty thousand eight hundred and seventy bucks you