1978 Jeep Cherokee Chief 4x4 Automatic on 2040-cars

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Mopar teases three concepts for SEMA

Chrysler first used the Mopar name in the 1920s, someone getting the idea to combine the words "motor" and "parts" for a service with that specialty. The automaker trademarked the name in 1937, first applying it to a line of antifreeze sold in cans. This makes 2022 the 85th anniversary of the division that now covers everything from service and parts to additional performance and customer care. We already heard the house of the round red M is going to SEMA with "a different flavor" of the battery-electric Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept that will begin to demonstrate future EV tuning possibilities. Thanks to a trio of concept sketches, we know Mopar's 15,345-square-foot booth will house a couple of Ram concepts and a fantastical Jeep to boot. We know next to nothing about them. The Jeep can be identified as an EV thanks to its Surge name, the circuit board motif on the sketch, and the EV badge behind the front wheel. The rig in the sketch appears to have no doors, and there's some structure ahead of the cabin that looks like a spare wheel, making us wonder at first if we were looking toward the front or the back. The door shutline and curve of the fender clarify the direction. We'll find out in a couple of weeks if Jeep plans on showing off tuning options for its electric wares same as Dodge. Mopar's press release on the show started with claiming it is "Charged Up" for SEMA. We're guessing that after Jeep's electric charge, Ram's talking about a super charge, one of the concepts being what appears to be a TRX in dayglo colors. The second Ram seems less rowdy, painted in a tri-tone 1970's style with a pinstripe and all, and fitted with what looks like a topper extending below the bed rails. The outdoor and overlanding life hasn't abated any since Ram showed its Rebel OTG Concept at the 2019 SEMA Show, so this could be another entirely fanciful take on overlanding. It's also possible that after Ram filed a patent application to trademark a vehicle built similarly to the Rebel OTG, we could see a bugout truck closer to production possibility.    The Stellantis brands could bask in more attention this year, with Ford, GM, Honda, and Hyundai all having pulled out. We'll find out what Dodge, Jeep, and Ram are all charged up about when SEMA happens from November 1-4 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. 

2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Alaska Cannonball | Oregon is on fire

Our man Jonathon Ramsey is driving a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on a 14-week, 14,000 mile journey across North America. Check out his first, second, and third installments.Port Orford, Ore. – On arrival at Battle Rock, just off the southern coast of Oregon, I had completed the (other) Trans-America Trail. It's a worthy Bucket List endeavor even before you get to the bits that challenge a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. The first tests came in western Oklahoma, tiptoeing through and around swampy farmland. Once I got to Colorado, the difficulty scale increased with each day's driving. By the time I hit wildfires and constant detours in Oregon, I was ready for the trail to end. Here are a few more notes from the last half: When I filled up in Columbia, North Carolina just before getting to Oregon Inlet, the odometer showed 12,294 miles. When I filled up in Port Orford before heading north to Seattle, the odo read 18,008, for nearly 6,000 miles in three weeks. GPSKevin says his trail covers 5,184 miles, but detours are an unavoidable part of the experience. Utah wins my vote for the widest variety of beauty. Crossing into southeastern Utah from Colorado, the landscape is full of desert farms and endless visibility to mountains at the ends of the Earth in Monticello. It's plush high plains greenery on the way up and down Geyser Pass, then the rocky red pioneer-killing cauldron of The Spanish Valley and Moab. Scrub-filled rock formations stretch to Salina, then back up to verdant forests in both halves of Fishlake National Forest. A final rocky stretch west of Sevier, Utah fell into a rolling golden land past Black Rock, another trip into sparer mountains, then the final comedown to Baker, Nevada. Moab gets all the Jeep love, but there's plenty of fun all over the state. In Ely, Nevada I met a Harley rider headed east out of Oregon who told me, "It's all on fire. Whole state. On fire." The haze began not long after leaving Ely. By the time I departed Battle Mountain, Nevada hills showed their own scorched-earth scars, and science-fiction gray skies hid entire mountain chains. Detours were already longer and lengthier in the West because of closed roads, locked gates, and "No Tresspassing" signs. Now fire-centric detours and turnarounds joined the routine. The last day on the trail in Oregon, a 114-mile route from Glendale, through the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest to Port Orford, was the hardest.

Coronavirus shakes up America's truck market: GM outselling Ford and Ram

FCA, Ford and General Motors joined the rest of the U.S. auto industry in taking heavy volume hits due to coronavirus-related shortages of both cars and customers. The saying goes that a rising tide lifts all boats; it stands to reason, then, that a falling one would have the opposite effect.  However, as we learned Thursday, the automotive market can behave in unpredictable ways. While the F-Series remained the best-selling nameplate in Q1, GM's full-size trucks are now outselling Ford's again for the first time in years, and with this upward thrust from the General, FCA's Ram was unceremoniously booted out of a hard-earned second place.  While late-March sales declines hit just about every major automaker in one way or another, the model-by-model results weren't nearly so uniform. And because the market tends to be a zero-sum game, for every winner, there generally has to be a loser.  In this case, that winner was GM, and its rise had to come at the expense of another automaker, in this case, Ford. F-Series sales dropped 13.1 percent in the first quarter of 2020, while sales of GM's full-sized Silverado and Sierra surged nearly 28% in the same period. FCA's Ram lineup managed a steady-as-she-goes 7% increase. All-in, GM finished the quarter with 197,743 full-size trucks sold to Ford's 186,562. Here's the full breakdown: Ford F-Series: 186,562  Chevrolet Silverado*: 144,734 Ram P/U: 128,805 GMC Sierra: 53,009 *includes 1,036 Medium Duty sales Things are a but murkier in the midsize segment, where the Chevy Colorado slipped 36% to just 21,430 units sold — just a few hundred better than the slow-selling Ford Ranger's Q1 numbers. The GMC Canyon experienced an almost identical slide, finishing the quarter with just 4,483 units sold. For perspective, Jeep sold more than 15,000 Gladiators and Toyota's midsize Tacoma slipped less than 8%, finishing the quarter with nearly 54,000 sales.  We suspect this discrepancy in full- and mid-size truck sales comes from shifting incentives. Ford, GM and FCA would like to keep selling bigger trucks because there's far more profit margin built into their list prices. Even with tens of thousands of dollars in manufacturer money on the hood, big trucks still make money.  Since these automakers report quarterly, we won't get another good look at these numbers until July, but if you thought that 2019 represented the new normal for U.S. auto sales, well, think again.