Ron Riccitelli is not supposed to be driving a four-door sedan.
A 26-year-old mortgage broker, Riccitelli has driven Toyota Supras and Mazda RX-7s. Last month, he was looking to trade up to a Cadillac Escalade or a Hummer H3, two road-clearing monsters that scream conspicuous consumption. But he didn’t. Instead, he bought a Chrysler.
“It’s flashy, and it looks like it’s worth a ton of money,” Riccitelli says of his new Chrysler 300C, which he got in a creamy shade called Cool Vanilla.
“It just hit me. It looks like a cartoon car in a way, but at the same time it has that luxury feel to it.”
Chrysler says the 300 was designed to evoke memories of Sunday afternoon drives to grandmother’s house. Instead, it has become the hot car for the hip-hop community, finding a place in 50 Cent videos and in the driveways of celebrities like Snoop Dogg.
In turn, young adults and even teenagers are snapping up the cars faster than Chrysler can make them–signaling the power of hip-hop artists to make a brand or product an instant must-have.
From its launch in April to the end of July, Chrysler sold as many 300s as it expected to sell all year. (The company would not provide exact sales figures.) Buyers are waiting two months for the cars to come in. Others have followed delivery trucks to dealerships and bought the cars straight off the truck, dealers say.
“When they get here, their life expectancy is three to four hours,” says Frank Roberts, sales manager at Tate Chrysler in Glen Burnie, Md. “This is a car that really appeals to the masses. You don’t need a garage for it, and it’s not 70 grand. I’ve got plenty of people waiting.”
Dealers say buyers of the 300 cross a broad range of ages and ethnicities, but it is the urban market that is giving the car its buzz.
“Urban market” used to be a euphemism for young African-Americans. But it now refers more broadly to a lifestyle and sensibility that includes minorities as well as yuppified city dwellers.
“It’s the market the masses look to to find out what’s next,” says Jameel Spencer, who co-founded Blue Flame Marketing in New York with P. Diddy and specializes in the urban market. Spencer says he’s a “big fan” of the 300.
“For a long time in this space, it was all about the high-end and spending lots of money,” he says. “That still reigns true, but what’s next is having a fashion sensibility, having some type of cachet, at a price point.”
One of the more enticing factors of the 300 is its price: It starts at $23,595, making it competitive with plain vanilla sedans including the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. But unlike those cars, you can get a V-8 Hemi engine in the 300, which will take you from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in about six seconds and bump the price beyond $33,000.
Even so, compared with the Hummer and Escalade, which both start around $52,000, the Chrysler is a bargain.
But it’s not price alone. Key to the car’s success is its bold, head-snapping styling: a tall, aggressive front end with a grille that resembles the gaping mouth of a shark, a long front hood, high door panels and chrome door handles and mirrors.
Some say it looks gangster-ish. Others say it resembles a Bentley.
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
