2006 Chrysler Pt Cruiser Base Wagon 4-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Chrysler celebrates 30 years of minivans with special editions

It's been known by many names: the Chrysler Town & Country, Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager, Chrysler Voyager, Lancia Voyager, Volkswagen Routan, Ram Cargo Van... but the bottom line is that Chrysler's minivans have defined the segment for 30 years now. In fact, Chrysler says it has sold 13 million of them since 1983, helped along by the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan that accounted for nearly half of all minivans sold in the United States just last year. So to celebrate this three-decade milestone, the Auburn Hills auto has announced a pair of new special editions.
The 2014 Chrysler Town & Country 30th Anniversary Edition starts the Touring-L trim and includes such special touches as 17-inch wheels, unique badging, available Granite Crystal Pearl paint and an interior decked out in black Alcantara and Nappa leather, piano black trim and all the optional bells and whistles bundled in.
The 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan 30th Anniversary Edition, meanwhile, starts off with either the SE or SXT trims and also upgrades with 17-inch alloys as well as color-keyed mirrors and an interior with silver stitching, piano black trim, power everything, and of course, those special badges.

Ralph Gilles talks minivans, Millennials, mobility, and kissing Alfa Romeos

We sat down with Ralph Gilles, the global head of design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. The veteran stylist has worked for the company for 25 years, and oversees the design of all of the products in the FCA portfolio – everything from mobility pods to Maseratis. This serves Gilles just fine, as his personal automotive interests are exceedingly diverse. The FCA stand was unusually quiet (until Vice President Joe Biden stopped by at the end of our time there) and Gilles was willing to weigh in on a wide range of subjects. Autoblog: We're seeing all of these autonomous mobility pods like Portal being presented at auto shows like CES or NAIAS, but we're not seeing any adoption of this kind of small vehicle in the market. What's your perspective on our pod-like autonomous future versus our truck-centric present? Ralph Gilles: Obviously I pay attention to the industry as much as your readers and yourself, and everyone has a take on the future. We had a debate, we could have done a supercar or something for pure sex appeal [ apparently that's also in the works], but we chose something practical, to really look at the future in a different perspective. We have these Millennials, a huge swath of people born between 1982 and 2004, and the oldest ones are turning 35 right about now, and a lot of them are having families later in life but when they have them they have a little more buying power, so it makes for an interesting cocktail. The one stipulation we had on the Portal project was that everyone had to be a Millennial to be on the team. So that excluded me, I had more of a coach role on the team. And to your point, the Portal in its current state as you see it is not going to be on the road tomorrow. But there's a lot of ideas, a lot of connectivity ideas, a lot of styling ideas, even lighting and technologies that will absolutely find their way into vehicles in the next few years. AB: Being a Detroiter, all of this attention we've had recently in Vegas, CES – I heard that they're maybe going to be running the show at the same time next year. Do you feel a little protective of the Detroit Show? RG: Yeah, it's something to watch. I hope it's not an aggressive thing on their part, by moving the shows on top of each other. They're both important shows. CES, I've been going to for the last five years, and it's changing. There's a lot more automotive content, but there are a lot more start-ups too, and it's interesting to watch.

Chrysler purchases remaining shares from VEBA Trust, announces funding plan

It's official: The Detroit Three is now The Detroit Two and The Fiat Subsidiary, Chrysler. Both the Italian carmaker and The Pentastar announced the completion of cash payments and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on future payments necessary to make the Chrysler Group a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fiat. As previously detailed, Chrysler made a cash payment of $1.9 billion and Fiat North America made a cash payment of $1.75 billion to the Voluntary Employment Benefit Association (VEBA) run by the United Auto Workers union.
On top of that, Chrysler Group signed an MOU that agrees to payments of $700 million to the VEBA in four installments, the first of which was made concurrently with the other cash payments. And for you trivia mavens, the full name of the UAW is the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. So go impress your loved ones with that nugget after you check out the press release below.