--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com
"Rich" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 22:45:48 -0500, "Peter A. Stavrakoglou"
wrote:

this car is the fruit of Chrysler's merger with Daimler. It's solid,
quiet,
fast, and reliable. If only it didn't cost so much.

The 300 is an interesting car. However, from what I've heard, the
Hemi, even with it's mechanism to cut down on the number of cylinders
(works much better than the horrific GM 8-6-4 option of the 1980s)
it averages pretty bad fuel economy. Even a Vette is supposed to be
superior.

A Corvette has about the same EPA rating as the 300C, but has an annoying
"skip shift" feature that skips from 1st to 4th under low load situations,
thus improving the fuel mileage on the EPA tests, but not in real world.
And its 6 speed transmission has two overdrive ratios, as opposed to the
300C's 5 speed and one overdrive.


Even though I don't own one presently, I am a bigger fan of European cars
than any other make. Having spent three weeks in Greece this summer and
doing the same eight years ago, I got to see and drive in quite a few cars
that I'll never have a chance to do here. The island I stayed on with
family has a heavy presence of French cars. They don't sell them here in
the US anymore, the quality years ago when they left the market here was
terrible. They certainly have turned that around from what I've seen in
Greece. The cars take quite a beating there and they just keep going.
The
Citroens, Renaults, Peugeots, and even the Fiats and Alfas. The SEATs
from
Spain and Skoda from the Czech Republic (owned by VW AG) are really nice
too. I wish they sold them here, I would certainly consider buying any of
them. They are quite stylish too.


European cars have styling, luxury (depending on the model) and speed
which in-part is due to the fact they don't have to meet U.S. crash
worthiness overseas or pollution control standards.
-Rich

German pollution standards are more stringent than ours in some categories,
and the differing crash standards don't contribute that much to the weight
or styling. And luxury has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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