Re: [Chrysler300] It's a Wrap

Sadly, except for some weekend cruising to nowhere in particular, the car season is over up here in New England as well. A couple more swap meets to attend, even though mid 50's to early 60's Mopar parts will be non-existent, one has to try. It's now dark by 5 pm, so no after work cruising during the week. My wife reminds me that 'it happens every year', but that doesn't seem to help. In less than 8 weeks the days start getting longer again. I try to remind myself of that during the snowstorms in Jan, Feb, and March. Time to take the bumpers off the 57 to send out for rechroming. Maybe even order some nice wide whitewall radials. Just saw Newsflite and if there are really only 400 or so 57's left, I should treat mine to a few improvements this winter. Hope to see more 300's in the spring.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 10:16 PM, cpaviper@xxxxxxxxxxx [Chrysler300] <Chrysler300-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Group,

It looks like my 2014 Cruising Season has finally come to a close. I fired up the F yesterday morning in the frosty, 27 degree early morning dawn air for its final local cruise, to Lake Forest, IL. The big wedge motor coughed and sputtered a bit until it fully warmed up, and ran great for its quick 45 mile drive up to this northern suburb of Chicago. And Andy Mikonis joined me there in his beautiful British Racing Green XK-E coupe. From there, we hit a swap meet a few miles away – but no good Mopar stuff to be found.

So this wraps up the F’s summer – 10,253 nearly trouble-free miles driven – no air, but for the wind in my face; no radio, but for the big bass music of the thundering 413 crossram; and lots of smiles – both mine, as well as lots of new friends the 300 met on the road. The great Club Meets – Mystic, Kokomo and White Sands. Back to the 50s in St. Paul with almost 12,000 pre-1964½ vehicles, and mine seemingly the only Letter Car out of all of these – the F found its beauty shot into “Old Cars Weekly’s” photo coverage of that happening. And Iola and Hickory Corners and local cruise-ins. A huge thanks to my savior Spanky Cox when my generator gave it up as I was heading southbound in Illinois, to meet up with John Begian, for our wonderful road trip to New Mexico. A couple hours later, and my generator was good as new. We spent our time waiting at a local Effingham restoration shop – friends of Spanky’s – all Mopar muscle – Petty ’64 Plymouth and Cotton Owens ’66 Charger tribute cars, the only factory-built ’64 Dodge max wedge convertible, a Cuda funny car, and several other Chargers, Plymouths, Dodges in various states of resto – what a treat! And all the cars at Spanky’s place – yet another treat!

By my calculations, the F averaged 12.2 mpg over all these miles driven this year. On our recent drive to New Mexico, generally cruising at about 72-75 mph, the F averaged 11.909 mpg on this 3188 mile trip. I’m not sure what John averaged in his “Best of Meet” G ragtop. Fortunately, premium fuel was considerably cheaper once I got away from this Chicago metro area. $936 in fuel cost over 268 gallons fed through those Carter AFBs, calculates to just under $3.50/gallon. When I left home, my local Shell station was charging $4.54/gallon. When cruising at under 70 mph, the F averaged over 13 mpg.

And, coincidentally, yesterday one of our local suburban papers – The Daily Herald – featured the F in its AutoSunday section. Photos in tis article are from the Northern IL Region WPC Club’s season kick-off show, back in mid-April this year. Here’s the link to the article -

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20141103/entlife/141109772/

300ly,

Noel Hastalis

300F Coupe
Burr Ridge, IL