This weekend, Houston Raceway Park will host the Clash of the Legion – a three-day drag racing event that showcases the best of the modern Mopar performance machines. This event includes the Legion of Demons, which is comprised of scores of dedicated drag racers who participate in a 2018 Challenger Demon, but it also includes … Read more
Canoo came to my attention due to a report that Apple had talked with them about making electric vehicles together. Of particular interest to me was their electric minivan. Like Rivian, Canoo has created a modular platform for making electric vans, cars, and trucks. Like the old body-on-frame cars, which long ago were jettisoned for … Read more
For years, some buyers of 2.4 liter engines have been afflicted by oil use. Not all the engines had problems, which was even more puzzling; manufacturing tolerances are extremely tight, so how could it be that one person would do oil changes every ten months or 10,000 miles and never have to add any, while … Read more
The original Avenger was a Hillman—and since Hillman became Chrysler Europe, re-using the name was perfectly fine. The first Dodge Avenger was a two-door coupe, based on the Mitsubishi Galant platform. For the 2008 model year, the old four-door, midsized “cloud-car” platform was replaced by a new JS platform, based on the Mitsubishi GS platform, … Read more
Frank Rhodes, Walter P. Chrysler’s great-grandson, has been battling to save the Chrysler brand for years. Chrysler has been battered and abused since the 1970s; its upscale image was diluted with thinly disguised Plymouths, and then the brand was starved of new product—the always-in-the-future Portal and Americanized Grand Commander notwithstanding. The 300 went from being … Read more
Chrysler is down to just one traditional car now, but at one time they had a reasonably full lineup, from the Windsor up to the 300 letter-car. The Windsor was introduced back in 1939, to be one level up from the base Royal model; it started roughly where the top DeSoto left off, while the … Read more
Years after Fiat and Chrysler came together, a team of engineers from nearly every part of the country, including Americans, Italians, and Brazilians, came together to create brand new small (GSE) and medium-sized (GME) four-cylinder engines. The acronyms stand for “Global Small/Medium Engine;” in Brazil, the GSE is marketed as the FireFly. The first of … Read more
Some reacted to news of FCA’s 2020 sales shortfall by pointing out that dealers were short of cars—a situation that is not likely to be improved by the global microchip shortage, which has shut down the Toluca and Brampton plants. Toluca makes the Jeep Compass and until recently produced the Dodge Journey and Fiat 500; … Read more