Archive for February, 2013

Mercedes-Benz 380 SEL
Doing hard time can change a man. Things you thought were true on the outside become less clear as time on the inside accrues. I did time—four years, in fact. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a lot of that time, at least the part that wasn’t spent in chemistry. You see, I was sentenced to four years of “learning” at Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois. My crime? Finishing eighth grade.

U.S. stamp of the 1967 Shelby GT-500
We don’t know if they’ll actually speed up delivery of your mail, but the latest offerings in the U.S. Postal Service’s “America on the Move” commemorative-stamp series sure look like they could.
Jeep Cherokee Returns for 2014

2014 Jeep Cherokee
After a 13-year absence, Cherokee is returning to Jeep’s model lineup.

The SRT Viper is plenty wild straight off the factory floor, but if it’s still not enough, Mopar offers plenty of aftermarket performance and dress-up goodies.
Most automakers have aftermarket parts divisions, but few put theirs as front-and-center as Chrysler does. At the 2013 Chicago Auto Show, Chrysler’s Mopar brand was out in force, with a separate section set aside and plenty of wares on display. For Dodge, SRT Viper, Fiat 500, and Jeep fans, it’s kid-in-a-candy-store time. Check out the pics below. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Car Spotter Challenge: Chrysler

Chrysler Crossfire
It has been a while since we published our first list of rewarding-to-find automotive obscurati, and for that we apologize. Take heart in the fact that at least one of the cars listed here represents a pretty serious car-spotter challenge, so the wait was worth it.

A Ford “High Swirl Combustion” (HSC) engine
In automotive parlance, the term “fleet special” is almost never used lovingly. Fleet-special cars and trucks are almost always decontented and often down on power compared to retail variants of the same vehicles.

Meet the self-parking parking garage.
Are you sick of snaking your car through a multi-layered parking garage, with its tight turns, traffic backups, narrow parking spaces, and no vacancies till the sixth floor? AutoParkiT has come to the rescue. On February 21, the company will unveil a fully automated parking structure in Sherman Oaks, California.

This post-apocalyptic 2013 Dodge Charger is one of the vehicular stars of the upcoming SyFy network TV show “Defiance.” The Dodge Challenger pictured on the banner will be featured in the corresponding video game.
The Chicago Auto Show is predominantly about new and upcoming production vehicles that can be bought at your local dealership, but the show also gets its fair share of concept vehicles, one-off custom cars, and TV and movie cars. Here are three Hollywood-inspired machines that we came across at this year’s show. . . .

1981 Cadillac ad
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and few periods in American automotive history were more desperate than the late 1970s and early ’80s.
Arriving just in time for a double-dip recession and an unprecedented spike in gas prices was the General Motors LC4 V6, a spin-off of Buick’s already ubiquitous 3.8-liter V6.