2009 Dodge Challenger R/t Coupe 2-door 5.7l Hemi on 2040-cars

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2015 Dodge Challenger SRT 392

I've just started reading the third installment in a planned five-book biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Master of the Senate, written by the incomparable Robert Caro. Conveniently, a recent trip to drive the BMW X6 M and 228i Convertible was to be staged in Austin, TX, within easy driving distance of LBJ's birthplace, Johnson City. And yes, the city is named for his family. Having completed my duties with the Bimmers, I borrowed the spangled 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT 392 you see above, to squire me around the Texas capitol for a weekend, and as a lift out to the Hill Country homestead of our 36th President. Johnson City isn't exactly a road trip mecca, but there's a pretty good brewery, a museum, the reconstructed LBJ house to take snapshots of, and it's a nice drive to get out there if you've got a 485-horsepower muscle car at your disposal. Driving Notes With the heroic Hellcat, this 392 and the R/T Scat Pack (that Brandon Turkus reviewed recently), there are more SRT-treated Challengers to choose from than ever before. There are 707 obvious reasons that the Hellkitty is the top dog (as it were), but there are important difference between this 392 and the Scat Pack, too. Both cars make use of the 6.4-liter Hemi V8 putting out 485 horsepower and 475 pound-feet of torque, but the 392 also gets an adaptive suspension, six-piston Brembo brake calipers (instead of four-piston), wider tires, leather and Alcantara seats, a heated steering wheel, a louder stereo and HID headlights. When LBJ was campaigning for his seat in the House of Representatives, he would've loved to have something as potent as this monster of a V8 under the hood of his canvassing car. The 6.4L snorts with authority before it sends the big coupe forward to just about any speed I'd ask of it, and with a quickness. Johnson was known for haranguing drivers to step on it, when all that stood between himself and a few more votes was the ability to fit one more stump speech into the day. The 392 feels as though it could cover a quarter of the state of Texas in a morning if you throttle down deep enough (faster even than the Johnson City Windmill, I'd guess). Though there's a six-speed manual available, I'm actually quite fond of the eight-speed automatic in the 392. The two-pedal setup better suits the fast-cruiser attitude of the car, and it never served up any poorly conceived shift logic when I left it in D. Of course, the roads are better now than they were in the 1930s and 40s, too.

FCA is setting a five-year strategy: Here's how the last one played out

We're slightly more than four years removed from Sergio Marchionne last five-year plan for FCA, a tell-all where the Italian-American automaker divulged its plans for the 2014 through 2018 model years. It was a grand affair, where Sergio told FCA investors that all was right in Auburn Hills, Alfa Romeo and Maserati were making comebacks, and the fifth-gen Dodge Viper received a mid-cycle refresh. You can read every last one of those past predictions right here. We're on our way to Europe to see Sergio's sequel, coming out Friday straight from FCA's Italian headquarters. (Bloomberg reports a plan to expand Jeep and Ram globally, combine Alfa Romeo and Maserati into a single division for an eventual spinoff, and downsizing Fiat and Chrysler. Also, EVs.) But before we arrive in Italy and find out exactly what Marchionne has planned for 2019 through 2023 as his last act as CEO, let's take a minute to tally up the results of his last term based on the same scoresheet we used in 2014. Now, we're only five months into 2018, so much of this — including vehicles like the Ram HD and Jeep Grand Wagoneer — could still debut this year. For those, we'll mark things TBD. We're not going to draw any conclusions or make any objectionable remarks. We're simply going to let the stats speak for themselves.

Chrysler investing $20M in Toledo plant to support 9-speed auto production

In 2011, Chrysler announced a $72-million investment in its Toledo Machining Plant to modernize production of the eight- and nine-speed torque-converters for automatic transmissions made there. That upgrade work won't be finished until Q3 of this year, but Chrysler has already announced a further $19.6-million investment to increase production capacity for the nine-speeders.
The extra units will be necessary because the nine-speed transmission they'll be mated to is going into three popular models: it will debut on the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, then go into the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart. The company predicted that this year alone it would sell 200,000 units equipped with the nine-speed tranny, and it is spending some $374 million in addition to the investment in Toledo to upgrade production capacity for it.
The work attached to this new investment won't begin until Q3 of 2014, and it will be finished by the end of that year. There's a press release below with all the details.