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But most of all, it turns heads in a way only Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in a Lamborghini can fully understand. Stuart Milne reckons that alone is enough to make it a corking car.

I've just moved house. The previous owners had packed all their worldly possessions into what can only be described as a horse box, and emptied it all in a new place.

For the hour-or-so between tearful goodbyes, my soon-to-be neighbours would have been waiting with trepidation, wondering who would be living next door.

And then they saw a bloke getting out of a blinging Chrysler 300C with a leather jacket and sunglasses.

From the collective curtain twitching, they thought they'd got a pimp, drug dealer or Russian Mafia bigwig living in the flat downstairs.

But I'm none of the above; just your regular motoring hack.

Lucky for them.

One of the perks of this job is the different car I get each week to roadtest, but none have provoked such a reaction as the 300C.

Driving through some of London's less salubrious areas, I could tell the locals were expecting a bootful of Class A or enough munitions to equip a small army.

If I had a white 300C, I could have passed for one quarter of the Ghostbusters.

On the motorway, other drivers clambered to get a closer look at the driver, expecting to see a rock star, or premiership footballer. Sadly for them, it was piloted by a balding journo with a celebrity status somewhere south of a Big Brother runner-up.

So why was it getting all the attention?

It may have something to do with its size (enormous), its chrome (lots), its wheels (a full 18 inches) and its menacing face (snarling).

But most of all, it's because few know what it is.

The 300C is a bit like a budget Bentley: flash, but not over the top. Get the huge 6.1-litre V8-engined SRT-8 hot rod and it'll go like one too.

But all this power is available at a fraction of the price. The SRT-8 is a snip at less than 40 grand, while the 3-litre diesel estate I drove is a bargain basement £27,000.

Early left hand drive models with around 11,000 miles on the clock can be had for around £20,000.

That's the same price as a mega mileage BMW 535 Touring.

For similar money you could get a range-topping Mondeo estate or a middle-of-the-road Audi A4 Avant, but where's the fun in that?

I want bags of grunt, rear wheel drive, bags of attitude and more shiny metal than a Sheffield steel foundry.

I want to feel like a rock star, be cosseted with leather seats and a loud stereo.

And I want to fit half of B&Q in the boot.

That's exactly what you get with the ice-cool 300C.