Extremely Minor Changes Coming to the Chrysler 300, If You Want It

Brace yourselves and hide the kids. The Chrysler 300, an aging full-size sedan whose best sales days are long behind it, wants to add a little flair to its top-flight 300C model.

No, there won’t be a monster of an engine borrowed from a Satanic-sounding Dodge. There won’t be head-turning paint options. Instead, Fiat Chrysler will endow its glitziest model with something found on the lesser-ranked 300S.

It’s an appearance package. A Performance Appearance Package, to use FCA’s chosen moniker. This truly tiny tidbit comes by way of Mopar Insiders, which noticed a new option poised to land on 300 buyers. (The brand’s consumer website does not currently show it.)

You’ll recall that the 300 is not a model that generates many headlines. Indeed, aside from a flurry of press about the model’s near-certain discontinuation in 2021 (or earlier), media stories are reserved for the two Dodge models built alongside the 300 at FCA’s Brampton, Ont. assembly plant. There wasn’t a single 300 on the car carrier I saw leaving Brampton Assembly last month.

Indeed, it was circumstantial evidence of the model’s declining sales relative to the reasonably healthy demand enjoyed by Dodge’s Challenger and Charger.

What does the Performance Appearance Package bring 300C buyers? Basically, a selection of ingredients from the 300S model’s Sport Appearance Package (seen above) — namely, a “performance” front fascia with revised fog lights and barely-there side sills. The 300S’s package, mimicking the looks of the brawny SRT model sold overseas, retails for $1,795 and includes a blacked-out grille surround and rear lip spoiler. The $695 package offered on the 300C doesn’t get that wild.

If it needed to be said, the powertrain does not receive the 6.4-liter V8 that’s also missing from the unavailable SRT’s 300C doppelganger. American 300 buyers stopped being able to tick an SRT box in 2015.

Chrysler 300 sales peaked with the current, rear-drive iteration’s debut in 2005, consistently falling year over year from 2012 onwards. Last year saw 46,593 300s sold in the U.S., compared to more than 144,000 sold in 2005. Over the first five months of 2019, 300 volume declined 36 percent as the Charger’s popularity rose 4 percent.

[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]