By Chris Haak

What’s in a name? A name can be powerful, both in good ways and bad. There are some names that no automaker would dare use again. Can you imagine a press conference for the 2013 Chevrolet Vega? There are others that have been besmirched by sub-par products years ago, yet the original holders of those names generate such strong positive, nostalgic feelings that sins of the Malaise Era may nearly be forgiven. The Dodge Charger falls into the latter category, and so does the Dodge Dart.

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By Charles Krome

Most gearheads know that Chrysler’s first go-round as a government-funded entity—for all the gnashing of teeth it caused—actually led to a number of very important product innovations that completely changed the course of the auto industry: The introduction of wide-scale platform sharing and the debut of the modern-day minivan. True, Chrysler wasn’t the very first to begin using the former or selling the latter, but it was the company that proved both could be successful in mass-market applications here in the U.S.

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By Chris Haak

Just the good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm
Beats all you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born.

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By Charles Krome

Frankly, I had my concerns when I heard the Chrysler Group was going to reconstitute its Street and Racing Technology group as its own individual brand. It didn’t seem like the best use of the automaker’s resources to me, especially when you consider that Chrysler is still in the process of getting its regular lineup sorted out—remember, the only Chrysler Group subcompact currently on the market is the low-volume Fiat 500, while its entries in the compact and mid-size sedan segments remain way behind the times. And beyond this, the automaker is already trying to support another new brand, Ram Trucks. But while the left side of my brain still had some questions after I attended the recent kickoff of the SRT High Performance Tour at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich., the gray matter in the right side of my skull came away more than satisfied with what’s going on.

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By Chris Haak

Lots of people drive heavy duty pickups.  Many contractors, businesses, and folks who have to do a lot of towing flock to these brutes because they are among the most capable vehicles on the planet as far as towing and hauling while still moving a family of five – at least among vehicles that don’t require a CDL to operate on public roads.

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By Chris Haak

Last Friday, I received a comment on our article that asked “What happened to the Tundra?” from Jason Lancaster, administrator of TundraHeadquarters.com that prompted me to take a closer look at whether I was missing an angle in my high-level annual sales analysis of the full-size pickup market from 2007 through 2010.  In the original article, I noted that Ford has been eating everyone else’s lunch, and that Toyota in particular has taken it on the chin.  Jason’s contention is that I painted with too broad of a brush when drawing my conclusions about the Tundra (which, by the way, I never said was a failure; I just want to know what happened to it).

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By Chris Haak

Way back in the 2007 model year, you may recall that things looked quite different in the auto industry. Neither GM nor Chrysler had declared bankruptcy; GM was still the world’s largest automaker. Ford had just bet the company that its latest restructuring would fix their problem once and for all. Toyota was on a seemingly unstoppable roll, with month upon month of increasing sales (often at a clip of 10 percent over the year-earlier period).

There were certainly storm clouds on the horizon for the Detroit Three. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were losing money, the credit markets were drying up, and there was a major threat brewing against the last bastion of US automakers: the full-size pickup.

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By Chris Haak

None of these announcements are necessarily earth-shattering, but in a meeting with analysts and media yesterday in Detroit, Chrysler executives outlined several interesting items of note on the product front.  According to Inside Line, fresh off the company’s first profitable quarter since 2006 (!), the company finally seems to be on the verge of breaking out of its long product slump.  Each of the company’s three divisions is getting something good.

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By Charles Krome

I guess I must have been a better person this year than I thought, because Chevy Claus stopped by just before Christmas to loan me a 2011 Chevrolet Camaro SS, along with a full tank of gas, for a week of holiday hot-rodding.

As most people know, the SS is currently at the top of the Camaro range, and I suppose “mine” was at the top of the top: It packed the LS3 V8, mated to a Tremec six-speed manual, which meant I had 426 hp and 420 lb.-ft. of torque on tap; you get a mere 400 of the former and 410 of the latter with the L99/six-speed auto combination.

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By Roger Boylan

After reviewing two cutting-edge cars of the future one after the other, Toyota’s Plug-In Prius and the Chevy Volt, I got back to basics with a good old pickup truck in the driveway for a week. Actually, it was a good new pickup, so new the dealer’s plastic covers were still on the floor mats and that sickly-sweet plastic-composite “new car” aroma lingered in the air.

My test vehicle was a 2011 Toyota Tacoma 4X4 Double Cab, silver, with shiny 16-in. alloy wheels: elegant but understated. Not overly macho, but far from fey. It’s a really handsome truck. There were barely 2200 miles on the odometer when I got behind the wheel, and about 2700 when I finished. I can honestly say the only miles of the intervening 500+ that I didn’t enjoy were the ones spent jostling over rough terrain as part of the off-road test; but more on that later.

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