2012 Chrysler 300 SRT8

If you ever wondered about the virtues of bailing out Chrysler, wonder no more. The 2012 300 SRT8 delivers the full-on German super-sedan experience, from stitched dash to clipped apex, at two-thirds the price. Can the SRT8s virtues outweigh the baggage of its branding? From the moment we saw the original Chrysler 300C, we loved the brash styling and no-excuses execution. It's just that there were so many buts. It's gorgeous but the exterior panel gaps are huge. It's spacious but the dashboard is Hertz-grade at best. It's fast but it isn't as composed as the competition. Forget the buts, with the exception of this one: The 300C is as good as the German competition... but it costs less. Way less. Good bones The new Chrysler 300 offers vastly improved interior quality, a tidier styling job that captures the bold appeal of the original but banishes the turret-top awkwardness, and a complete set of modern electronic features. 

The SRT8 is all of that, plus the heroic new 6.4L HEMI V-8, capable of propelling the Chrysler through the quarter mile in the twelves and all the way to a Berlinetta Boxer-challenging 175 mph. Did they fix the interior? Absolutely. Stitched leather dash, flat-bottomed satin-chrome steering wheel, upmarket gauges, and a 19-speaker harman/kardon sound system that saves weight while resolving the very mezzoforte of the coloratura soprano and blah blah blah. Finally, Chrysler's built a sedan that doesn't look best from fifty feet away. An intense session of nitpicking, held with an editor of a racing-oriented magazine, yielded one big criticism: The plastic sleeve under the shift gate looks mad cheap, yo. Not that the Germans are doing it much better, mind you. So if you want to wait for improvements to the 2013, definitely consider the idea that they might do something about that shift gate.