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2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio vs. 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk: On-paper sibling rivalry

Pricing was revealed for the 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, and with its $81,590 price tag, it's within range of yet another high-performance SUV from Fiat-Chrysler: the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. The Hellcat-powered Jeep is more expensive than the Stelvio at $86,995, but depending on options, the price advantage might go either way. This left us wondering, how similar are these two high-powered SUVs? Besides sharing the same number of words in their very-long names, we took a look at some of their performance specs and put them in the spreadsheet below. As always, if you want to compare either of these with other speedy SUVs, be sure to try out our comparison tools. As far as outright speed, both SUVs are surprisingly close. The Trackhawk is just a bit quicker in a straight line, hitting 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds as opposed to the Alfa's 3.9. The Jeep's 180-mph top speed is also 3-mph quicker than the Alfa. But neither of these differences is especially huge. What makes this interesting is how different the paths each SUV takes to get to its results. The Trackhawk accomplishes the task with pure grunt. It has Dodge's Hellcat supercharged 6.2-liter V8 making 707 horsepower and 645 pound-feet of torque to overcome its hefty 5,363-pound body. The Alfa, on the other hand, makes do with less power and torque, 505 and 443, respectively, from its twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V6. It has less weight, though. Exactly how much less we're not sure, since Alfa hasn't revealed that number, but a regular Stelvio weighs right around 4,000 pounds, so we would guess the weight is similar, possibly a little more. View 14 Photos The differences in how each SUV achieves its performance should result in pretty different driving characteristics, and probably different buyers. Each SUV's bragging points also indicates this. The Trackhawk boasts an impressive 11.6-second claimed quarter-mile time, something that American muscle car fans everywhere care about. The Alfa brags about how it's the fastest production SUV to lap the Nurburgring, something sure to impress fans of foreign cars and those that value handling over straight-line performance. So really, although these two SUVs have performance similarities, they're also very different, and the right one for you depends on what you value. View 29 Photos Also, as an afterthought, we wonder if the guys that attempted a Viper record at the 'Ring would be up for trying to break the Alfa time with the Jeep.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Are supercars becoming less special?

There's little doubt that we are currently enjoying the golden age of automotive performance. Dozens of different models on sale today make over 500 horsepower, and seven boast output in excess of 700 hp. Not long ago, that kind of capability was exclusive to supercars – vehicles whose rarity, performance focus, and requisite expense made them aspirational objects of desire to us mortals. But more than that, supercars have historically offered a unique driving experience, one which was bespoke to a particular model and could not be replicated elsewhere. But in recent years, even the low-volume players have been forced to find the efficiencies and economies of scale that formerly hadn't been a concern for them, and in turn the concept of the supercar as a unique entity unto itself is fading fast. The blame doesn't fall on one particular manufacturer nor a specific production technique. Instead, it's a confluence of different factors that are chipping away at the distinction of these vehicles. It's not all bad news – Lamborghini's platform sharing with Audi for the Gallardo and the R8 yielded a raging bull that was more reliable and easier to live with on a day-to-day basis, and as a result it went on to become the best-selling Lambo in the company's history. But it also came at the cost of some of the Italian's exclusivity when eerily familiar sights and sounds suddenly became available wearing an Audi badge. Even low-volume players have been forced to find economies of scale. Much of this comes out of necessity, of course. Aston Martin's recent deal with Mercedes-AMG points toward German hardware going under the hood and into the cabin of the upcoming DB11, and it's safe to assume that this was not a decision made lightly by the Brits, as the brand has built a reputation for the bespoke craftsmanship of its vehicles. There's little doubt that the DB11 will be a fine automobile, but the move does jeopardize some of the characteristic "specialness" that Astons are known for. Yet the world is certainly better off with new Aston Martins spliced with DNA from Mercedes-AMG rather than no new Astons at all, and the costs of developing cutting-edge drivetrains and user interfaces is a burden that's becoming increasingly difficult for smaller manufacturers to bear. Even Ferrari is poised to make some dramatic changes in the way it designs cars.