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Dodge Challenger returns to Trans Am

NASCAR's Nationwide Series may have switched (in appearance anyway) to muscle cars, but American racing fans know that if they want to see real muscle cars on the street circuits, the only place to look is Trans Am. The all-American racing series is packed with Mustangs, Camaros and even Corvettes. The one thing it's been missing is the Dodge Challenger, but now SRT Motorsports has announced it's bringing its muscle car back where it belongs.
Rather than waiting until next year, the Miller Racing team is switching mid-season to the new Dodge Challenger SRT Trans Am racer you see here, just in time for this weekend's race at Mid-Ohio. And not just that - it's lined up a compelling pair of drivers to pilot it, as well.
The No. 11 car will be driven by Trans Am legend Tommy Kendall, a four-time series champion who's been off the grid since 2004. Backing him up in the No. 1 Challenger will be none other than Cameron Lawrence, the driver who has won five out of six races in the Chevy Camaro so far this season, losing out only once to American racing scion Adam Andretti.

2015 Dodge Viper getting small increase in power

The Viper is used to being the most powerful car in the Dodge and SRT stables, but the arrival of the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat means that's no longer the case. The serpentine supercar is, however, reportedly getting a small boost in output for 2015, amounting to all of five horsepower.
The increase was uncovered by Road & Track courtesy of the SAE J1349 certification process to which Detroit's Big Three automakers submit themselves and which reports the Viper's output at 645 hp instead of the 640 it was rated at until now. There are a hundred factors that could have contributed to the relatively mild boost in output (best guess? nothing at all changed...), but we doubt anyone's going to complain about some extra horses under the hood.
The five-horsepower boost brings the Viper that much closer to the 650-hp Chevy Corvette Z06, not to mention the 707-hp Hellcat, but the Viper's impressive power-to-weight ratio ought to mean it'll have little problem keeping up in a straight line - which is just one of the reasons why Chrysler won't shoe-horn the Hellcat into the Viper: as R&T points out, the supercharged engine is too heavy and the blower makes it too tall to fit in the Viper's engine bay.

Does the future of Fiat-Chrysler include Dodge?

Wards Auto reports the future of Dodge is looking uncertain. Fiat has more or less laid out it's game plan for the next few years, and while the Chrysler, Fiat and Jeep lines are set to receive plenty of love, Dodge isn't so lucky. Fiat has already hobbled Dodge significantly by splitting off the brand's trucks into a separate Ram line.
Wards says that after the Avenger rides off into the sunset early next year, Fiat-Chrysler won't replace the model, leaving a gaping midsize hole in the Dodge lineup. The report also cites unnamed sources as saying that at least two other current Dodge products will move to the Chrysler line.
One of those could very well be the Grand Caravan. Chrysler has already made it clear that it plans to trim redundancy between its minivan offerings, but it has yet to clarify which other vehicle could sail under the Chrysler banner moving forward. Either way, such changes to the product line would theoretically leave Dodge with just four models.