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Defiance Dodge Charger, saving Earth from aliens isn't clean work [w/video]

You'll be forgiven for not having heard about the TV show Defiance - it actually hasn't aired its first episode yet. The new science fiction show about an alien war against Earth in the near future seems like a perfect fit for the SyFy channel, and, apparently one that Dodge saw as a slick marketing opportunity for its Charger sedan.
Here in Chicago, Dodge has given a large corner of its show stand to the Defiance Charger, a car that won't be skipped by any Mad Max fans in attendance at this year's show. The Charger boasts one hell of a gnarly patina under a confusingly welded cage of tube steel, as well as window bars, a grille guard in front, and big, knobby truck tires. There aren't any obvious guns or turrets on the outside of the vehicle, so we can only hope that the characters driving it go well-armed.
Look for the Charger to make its star turn in Defiance when the series premieres on SyFy on April 15 at 9:00 PM EST. Also, there's said to be a Defiance video game in the works, too, so you may get a chance to steer the burly Dodge for yourself. Find a trailer for the show, below, as well.

Guy trying to sell Challenger Hellcat for $89,000 because VIN ends in '666'

The Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is undoubtedly one of the baddest cars on the road today. With a 707-horsepower supercharged V8 snarling under the hood, the coupe can go down the road like a bat out of hell. There's not much that could make one of these muscle machines much more menacing, but a seller on Craigslist has one bizarre solution: offering a hellacious Hellcat with a VIN marking the Dodge as the beastly 666. What's the price for such unholy identification? That's a cool $89,000 – around $30,000 more than a brand new, less sacrilegious example. The seller claims that the Challenger's blasphemous number makes the vehicle "one of a kind," which is true only to the extent that VINs ending 665 and 667 would be similarly unique. The seller also says in the Craigslist ad, "This car is sure to become a collector's item and will only increase in value." There's no question that the Hellcat is a special machine, and the models just might be worth something decades into the future. Expecting that a future owner is going to care about the VIN seems pretty optimistic, though, unless this is either the first or last example, which it's not. To the credit of this superstitious seller, the Challenger appears completely untouched with all of the warning stickers, paperwork and even the plastic still covering the seats. So, the new owner is at least getting a practically untouched example. While we applaud audacity here, a roughly $30,000 premium for an unholy VIN seems a bit... devilish.

Chrysler patents smarter minivan folding seats

It's frightening to think of how quickly the mice would have overtaken us if we hadn't stayed one step ahead of them with better mousetraps. We'll never have to worry about that in our relentlessly re-engineered world, though. Case in point: Chrysler has been granted a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office for an improved design of the already wondrous Stow 'n' Go seating found in the automaker's Town and Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans.
Introduced in 2005, the Stow 'n' Go was improved in 2008, and based on the drawings of this third-generation improvement, the new design appears to allow stowage of the second row of seats without having to move the front-row seats forward as much. It look like it also involves fewer operations and moving parts, with a portion of the seatback being incorporated into the flat floor when the seats are stowed, as opposed to having a completely separate cover.
It's possible that the innovation may appear on the next-generation minivans expected in 2015, but Chrysler isn't commenting on the patent.