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2014 North American Car and Truck/Utility of the Year finalists announced [w/poll]

The 2014 North American International Auto Show is right around the corner, which means it's high time we found out which cars and trucks would be finalists for the prestigious North American Car and Truck/Utility of the Year awards.
The finalists - three in cars and three in three trucks/utilities - are dominated by American brands, with two-thirds of the finalists hailing from either General Motors or Chrysler (don't worry Ford, there's always next year), while outliers from Mazda and Acura can be found in each contest. Here now is the list of finalists for the big prizes:
2014 North American Car of the Year:

Auto Mergers and Acquisitions: Suicide or salvation?

We love the Moses figure. A savior riding in from stage right with the ideas, the smarts, and the scrappiness to put things right. Alan Mullaly. Carroll Shelby. Lee Iacocca. Andrew Carnegie. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Bart Simpson. Sergio Marchionne does not likely view himself with Moses-like optics, but the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently gave a remarkable, perhaps prophetic interview with Automotive News about his interest and the inevitability of merging with a potential automotive partner like General Motors. Marchionne has been overtly public about his notion that GM must merge with FCA. For a bit of context, GM sold 9.9 million vehicles in 2014, posting $2.8 billion in net income, while FCA sold 4.75 million units and earned $2.4 billion in net income, painting a very rosy FCA earnings-to-sales picture. But that's not the entire picture. Most people in the auto industry still remember the trainwreck that was the DaimlerChrysler "merger" written in what turned out to be sand in 1998. It proved to be a master class in how not to fuse two companies, two cultures, two continents, and two management teams. Oh, it worked for the two individuals at both helms pre-merger. They got silly rich. And the industry itself was in a misty romance at the time with mergers and acquisitions. BMW bought Rolls-Royce. Volkswagen Group bought Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini, putting all three brands into their rightful place in both products and positioning. No marriages there, so no false pretense. Finally, Nissan and Renault got married in 1999. A successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust. But a successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust, the principle part being honesty. Daimler and Chrysler lied to each other. The heads of each unit, the product planners, and finance all presented their then-current and long-range forecasts to each other with less-than-forthright accuracy. Daimler was the far greater equal and no one from the Chrysler side enjoyed that. The cultures were entirely different, too, and little was done to bridge that gap. Which brings me back to the present overtures by Marchionne to GM. "There are varying degrees of hugs," Marchionne stated in the Automotive News piece. "I can hug you nicely, I can hug you tightly, I can hug you like a bear, I can really hug you." Seriously?

Jeep going bigger with new Grand Wagoneer, smaller with sub-Renegade?

The headlines are still rolling in for the new Renegade that Jeep unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show last week, but already reports are surfacing, citing sources within the company, about what Chrysler's iconic off-road brand will do next.
Speaking with Auto Express (whose reports we tend to take with a grain of salt or two), Jeep chief Mike Manley suggested that two courses of action are currently under consideration at Auburn Hills to develop two very different new models - one smaller and one larger than anything Jeep currently makes.
One plan would be to make an SUV or crossover even smaller than the new Renegade, although it isn't immediately clear what platform it would take. The Renegade (pictured above in Trailhawk spec) will be built in Italy alongside Fiat's upcoming 500X, but uses a heavily modified platform. We figure the smaller model, if approved, could base itself on the new Fiat Panda Cross.