Daily coverage of the world of cars.
To most people, spring means longer days, sunny skies, and flowers in bloom. For us, however, spring also means great deals on outgoing model-year vehicles. While some cars, like the Honda Civic and Mitsubishi Outlander, received enormous changes between the 2015 and 2016 model years, others enjoyed more modest enhancements or were complete holdovers from the year before. It’s these cars — the unchanged models — that we want to find.
Dodge rocked the automotive world when it unleashed the fiery and sinister 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat upon the earth.
Up until that point, an engine with 700 ponies was reserved for cars with exotic nameplates that had prices stretching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
With the introduction of the Hellcat, Dodge managed to bring ungodly amounts of power to any mere mortal with a spare 60 grand and, not surprisingly, mortals have gobbled it up. Since dealers have no problems selling the Hellcat, the engine has migrated into the Charger and will next show up in the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
You read that right. Your friendly neighborhood family hauler might have a 707-hp secret. But that’s nothing compared with what could come after that:
A Hellcat-powered Wrangler.
Expected reliability is the single most important factor in deciding on a car, according to J.D. Power. Whether you want a vehicle for off-roading, track days, or everyday commuting, you definitely don’t want one that will cost you a lot of extra money, time, or frustration in repairs. J.D. Power’s annual Vehicle Dependability Study, now in its 27th year, polls owners of 3-year-old cars to determine the number of problems they experienced during the previous 12 months. The company then ranks each maker and model by the number of problems experienced per 100 vehicles.
Flappers. Beatniks. Hippies. Hipsters. The media never tires of creating new terms for members of the younger generation. In the old days, those terms often had a negative connotation, but now that the Internet gives the younger generation the power to participate in the media, those terms tend to be less openly hostile. The current younger generation generated quite a bit of hostility in the auto press a while back, with headlines declaring things like “Millennials don’t like ____ (cars, shopping for cars, taking care of cars, driving, etc.).” More recent headlines question those older ones, suggesting millennials do like cars and driving, but think cars and driving are different than they used to be. We prefer the sound of those recent headlines, and we agree that cars and driving are changing radically.
Dating for millennials is also changing, apparently, but one thing hasn’t: The vehicle you use to pick up a romantic partner and and take him or her out on a date will have a big impact on that date. So in the interest of finding news ways to satisfy old needs, here are 10 vehicles we think would be perfect for 10 new types of millennial dates. We hope you have a great Valentine’s Day, millennial or not.
Last week on this blog we proposed some of the cars that are worth re-imagining with different bodies. It was fun and included everything from an F-TYPE with a backseat to a hyper-luxury minivan.
Neither of those are safe bets to hit the market anytime soon, but the vehicle that got us thinking about such possibilities is the ubiquitous Jeep Wrangler.
The Wrangler just might be the most famous 4×4 of all time, and the next few years could turn out to be some of the best it has ever seen.
Here’s what’s coming down the road for Wrangler fans.