2005 Viper Srt10 8.3l V10 Convertible 11k Miles,black/black,we Finance on 2040-cars

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The best cars we drove this year

Six hundred and fifty. That's roughly how many cars pass through the hands of Autoblog editors every year, from the vehicles we test here at home, to the cars we drive on new product launches, testing roundups, long-term cars, and so on. Of course, our individual numbers vary due to several reasons, but at the end of the day, our team's repertoire of automotive experience is indeed vast. But let's be honest, some cars certainly stand out more than others. So as the year's about to turn, and as we're readying brand-new daily cat calendars for our cubicles, our editors are all taking time to reflect on the machinery that made this year so special, with one simple, open-ended question as the guide – a question that we're asked quite frequently, from friends, family, colleagues, and more. "What's the best car you drove this year?" Lamborghini Huracan When I review the list of everything I drove in 2014, picking an absolute favorite becomes almost impossible. I mean, how does one delineate between the joy offered by cars as different as the Alfa Romeo 4C, Volkswagen Golf R, Mercedes-AMG GT S and even the humble-yet-wonderful Chevy Colorado? Okay fine, I'll just pick the Lamborghini. I drove the Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4 on a racetrack, in the mountains, and along southern coast of Spain. It felt like the king of the car jungle in all of those places, sucking the eyeballs of observers nearly out of their heads as it drove by, and almost melting my brain with its cocktail of speed and grip and intense communication. It feels a little easy to say that the one new supercar I drove this year was also my favorite, but the fact is that the Huracan is one of the finest cars I've driven during my career, let alone 2014. Judge me if you must. – Seyth Miersma Senior Editor Rolls-Royce Wraith There are a couple of ways to look at the question, "What's the best car you drove this year?" In terms of what was so good I'd go out and buy one tomorrow, that'd be my all-time sweetheart, the Volkswagen GTI. Or if I'm just talking about sheer cool-factor, maybe something like the Galpin GTR1, BMW i8, or Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG. But instead, I'm going to write about the sheer opulence of being the best of the best. The hand-crafted, holier-than-thou, shut-your-mouth-when-I'm-talking-to-you supremacy. I'm picking the Rolls-Royce Wraith. I drove the Wraith for a week in April, and was really, really impressed. This car does everything, perfectly.

Gas prices down, 707-hp engine production up... USA!

On Saturday, the United States of America will celebrate its 239th birthday. That means fireworks, barbecues, block parties, and, oh yeah, Hellcat engines and low fuel prices. The most American of (Mexican-built) powerplants, the big, loud, supercharged, 707-horsepower Hemi is slated for yet another production boost to match up with some serious demand, while the dino juice it runs on is cheaper than it's been in over half a decade. The Saltillo, Mexico engine factory already produces some 4,000 Hellcat engines each year – that's in addition to the Tigershark four-cylinder, the 5.7-liter Hemi, and 6.4-liter SRT Hemi V8s – and it's not entirely clear how many more might get added to that total. What we do know, though, is that Fiat Chrysler can't build the engines fast enough. "We're going to build more [Hellcats] for 2016," SRT boss Tim Kuniskis told Automotive News. "It's a small sliver of what we sell, but it really creates a halo for the rest of the lineup. For example, the next highest car, the Scat Pack Challenger, I have essentially a zero-day supply. It's sold out." This bit of good news comes on the back of something equally good – low summer gas prices. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the nationwide average for for "all formulations" of fuel in June sits at $2.885. Ignoring the remarkably low prices we saw in January and February of this year – figures that themselves hadn't been seen since May of 2009 – the national average hasn't sat that low since October 2010. So yes, it's a very a good time to be an American gearhead. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req., US Energy Information AdministrationImage Credit: US EIA Green Plants/Manufacturing Dodge Fuel Efficiency Coupe Performance Sedan dodge challenger srt tim kuniskis dodge charger srt

Ram to go on a Rampage with new small pickup?

When people look back at today's automotive industry, what do you think they'll remember us for? The emergence of hybrids? Ever more expensive and exotic supercars? The dawn of the self-driving car? All likely scenarios, but so is the blurring of lines between one bodystyle and another, giving rise to hardtop convertible coupes and crossovers of every shape and size. But one bodystyle the North American auto industry has stayed largely away from in the past couple of decades is a car nose and chassis with a pickup bed.
It's a bodystyle immortalized by the Chevrolet El Camino, but with few exceptions, we haven't seen too many of these automotive platypuses in recent years on our turf. Subaru tried with the Baja and the low-volume Honda Ridgeline soldiers along largely unchanged, but the genre's biggest adherents are still Down Under, where ute versions of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon live. With a few other examples scattered to the four corners of the earth, that's really about it. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it looks like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could be working to bring it back.
Spied undergoing testing in Michigan, what we appear to be looking at is a heavily disguised Fiat Strada being prepared - like the Fiat Ducato-based Ram ProMaster and the smaller Doblo-based ProMaster City - for Stateside duty as a Ram product. The Strada, for those unfamiliar, is a product of Fiat Automóveis in Brazil and is based on the Palio economy car. The nameplate has been around South America since 1996 and was originally designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (long before Volkswagen monopolized his talents), and takes a more rugged approach in the form of the Strada Adventure.