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2015 Easter Jeep Safari Concepts First Drive

Imagine if once a year your grandmother made a chocolate cake. Not a chocolate cake, that chocolate cake. Blow-your-mind chocolate cake. But she won't ever let you have any – you can only have the spatula and whatever's left over in the mixing bowl. And you don't care. You look forward to that spatula and bowl every year because – "Gadzooks!" – that is some stupendous cake. For us, that cake is the Easter Jeep Safari. An annual pilgrimage to Moab, Utah for a taste of what Fiat-Chrysler's off-road brand has cooked up in its Design Dome. "No, you can't have any," the company tells us, "but you can taste it here, then dream about it until next Easter." In Detroit, Jeep gave us a close look at the seven concepts it built for this year's 49th annual event. Then it went a step further and took those show cars to Mill Canyon, UT, to crawl the red rocks in Jeep's natural habitat. After all, the company calls Moab, "Our home away from home." And it's not true that we never get more than a taste of Jeep's conceptual goodness – 2011's JK8 pickup conversion kit is a slice of Safari creation we can now take home, for instance, as are the hood decals that adorned two of the concepts we drove this year. Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO of Mopar, told us that the evolution of Jeep Performance Parts came from listening to journalists and customers in his first year on the job in 2010. So there's that. But still, we want more cake. Like a full-on production Wrangler Africa. These being one-of-a-kind prototypes traipsing through a canyon of nearly immovable objects, we didn't go fast, we didn't go far, we didn't push hard. But we did drive all the Easter Jeeps, and even just this small taste was outstanding. View 30 Photos Jeep Chief While we listened attentively to the detailed spiels on all this conceptual candy, one question ran through our minds: "How am I going to get in the Chief before everyone else?" And we could see the same thought every colleague's face, those scheming bastards. And why not? The Ocean Blue tribute to the venerable Cherokee of old grabbed everyone's attention since the first teaser images weeks before the event, in part because the vintage truck is up there with mermaids for rarity and lustworthiness. Anything that goes this far in obeisance to that classic Jeep is always going to score huge marks. The Chief is a four-door Wrangler underneath, but in many ways it feels nothing like a Wrangler.

Jeep idles second shift it hired a month ago for 2014 Cherokee

In an unusual move, Chrysler is idling its recently hired second shift of 2014 Jeep Cherokee builders because, Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said in a statement, it already has built the "critical number of vehicles we need to stock dealerships once containment is released," Automotive News reports.
After the "critical" 9,430 Cherokees were built, the layoff was enacted so as not to strain the automaker's logistics partners before the Cherokee is actually released. Chrysler says the temporary layoff will last about two weeks, with 500 workers out of work and another 600 reassigned at the Toledo Assembly Complex where the sports utility vehicle was being built. The second-shift workers were hired on August 19.
Chrysler previously insisted that it would release the Cherokee to dealerships by the end of the third quarter, and it initially planned to start selling the SUVs in mid-August. Apparently the Cherokee needed a software fix before hitting showrooms, which is how Chrysler explains why the release schedule is out of whack. We're thinking that this software fix addresses the "powertrain calibration" issue that delayed the first media test drives of the model. According to the Toledo Blade, Chrysler has admitted it is doing "extended quality validation testing" but refused to provide more information.

FCA is setting a five-year strategy: Here's how the last one played out

We're slightly more than four years removed from Sergio Marchionne last five-year plan for FCA, a tell-all where the Italian-American automaker divulged its plans for the 2014 through 2018 model years. It was a grand affair, where Sergio told FCA investors that all was right in Auburn Hills, Alfa Romeo and Maserati were making comebacks, and the fifth-gen Dodge Viper received a mid-cycle refresh. You can read every last one of those past predictions right here. We're on our way to Europe to see Sergio's sequel, coming out Friday straight from FCA's Italian headquarters. (Bloomberg reports a plan to expand Jeep and Ram globally, combine Alfa Romeo and Maserati into a single division for an eventual spinoff, and downsizing Fiat and Chrysler. Also, EVs.) But before we arrive in Italy and find out exactly what Marchionne has planned for 2019 through 2023 as his last act as CEO, let's take a minute to tally up the results of his last term based on the same scoresheet we used in 2014. Now, we're only five months into 2018, so much of this — including vehicles like the Ram HD and Jeep Grand Wagoneer — could still debut this year. For those, we'll mark things TBD. We're not going to draw any conclusions or make any objectionable remarks. We're simply going to let the stats speak for themselves.