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Vile Gossip: Ladies who launch

Jean Jennings has been writing about cars for more than 30 years, after stints as a taxicab driver and as a mechanic in the Chrysler Proving Grounds Impact Lab. She was a staff writer at Car and Driver magazine, the first executive editor and former president and editor-in-chief of Automobile Magazine, the founder of the blog Jean Knows Cars and former automotive correspondent for Good Morning America. She has lifetime awards from both the Motor Press Guild and the New England Motor Press Association. Look for more Vile Gossip columns in the future. The year was 2006. We were driving a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 across the Florida Panhandle from Jacksonville to Panama City, only because I couldn't convince Bugatti to let me be the first to drive its exotic powerhouse, the world's fastest car at that time, all the way across America. One gleaming example had arrived in time for the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, where the journos massed for their quick test drives out the front drive of the Ritz Carlton, down a short stretch of the A1A, and back to the Ritz. Not far enough for me. I wanted to take the Veyron in all of its 16-cylinder, 1,001-horsepower, $1.3-million-dollar glory on a coast-to-coast extravaganza of a road trip. Never hurts to ask. I asked. Once the Bugatti guys stopped hyperventilating, I explained that the coastal adventure would be contained wholly within the state of Florida, from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico. My secret destination, however, was to be Vernon, Florida, home of the great Errol Morris' classic documentary about a town in the Panhandle with the highest per-capita population of citizens who'd blown off or whacked off a limb for insurance money. (Google "Nub City.") The Swiss head of Bugatti public relations thought it hilarious. He showed up in a van with a couple of German mechanics to follow us and a failed French Formula 1 driver to serve as my chaperone. I came with a photographer from Germany and one of the most infamous of bad-boy auto magazine tech editors, the irrepressible Don Sherman. Sherman had his own reason for going, and it had nothing to do with a Veyron to Vernon. Once we gave up looking for nubbies, he ordered me to veer south to the handgrip of the Panhandle, familiarly known as the Redneck Riviera. The Don was aiming to secretly execute the Veyron's first Launch Control blastoff in captivity.

Jeep Wrangler Willys Wheeler wants mountains, not a stage

We've said it before and we'll say it again - while we usually grow tired of the endless barrage of special edition vehicles, that isn't the case with the Jeep Wrangler. Every unique model we encounter seems cooler than the one before it, and this Willys Wheeler Edition is no exception.
The Willys Wheeler package is sort of a throwback to early Jeep CJ models, and wears "Willys" stickers on the hood. There's also a gloss black grille, rock rails to protect the side sills, and unique 17-inch black wheels wrapped in meaty BF Goodrich KM Mud Terrain tires. For proper off-road prowess, this special edition uses a Dana 44 rear axle with a limited-slip differential and a 3.73 final drive ratio.
Look for the Willys edition to hit dealerships early next year, starting at $25,795 for the two-door version and $29,595 for the four-door. Feel free to read all about it in the press release below.

Jeep rocks the Wrangler Red Rock concept in Vegas [w/video]

The SEMA show may have once been all about dropping rides to the floor, but these days it's at least as much about jacking them up on lifted suspensions. And few show cars – or trucks, we should say – managed to embody that spirit at this year's tuner exposition quite as well as the Jeep Wrangler Red Rock you see here. The concept started out life as a Wrangler Unlimited, but instead of four doors, it has none. Or any roof, for that matter. Just a roll cage and a windscreen. What it does have are 17-inch wheels wearing 35-inch BF Goodrich tires and fitted to a suspension lifted by two inches. It also has a reinforced tailgate, power winch, tow hooks... everything, in short, that you could want or need for off-roading, and little more. As you can see, it also looks the business, with a custom hood, body-color grille, matte-finish bumpers, and a brown leather interior. Handsome as it is, though, its rugged beauty runs more than skin deep: lift off the sheetmetal and you'd find electronic locking differentials, a transfer case, and solid axles fore and aft. A more extreme take on the existing Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon Hard Rock edition, the Red Rock show truck was done up to honor the organization behind the Easter Jeep Safari that's a favorite among the legions of the Jeep faithful. And while it remains a concept only for the time being, a production version is slated to follow in time to celebrate the event's 50th anniversary next year. Related Video: