2013 Ram 3500 St on 2040-cars

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Ram to go on a Rampage with new small pickup?

When people look back at today's automotive industry, what do you think they'll remember us for? The emergence of hybrids? Ever more expensive and exotic supercars? The dawn of the self-driving car? All likely scenarios, but so is the blurring of lines between one bodystyle and another, giving rise to hardtop convertible coupes and crossovers of every shape and size. But one bodystyle the North American auto industry has stayed largely away from in the past couple of decades is a car nose and chassis with a pickup bed.
It's a bodystyle immortalized by the Chevrolet El Camino, but with few exceptions, we haven't seen too many of these automotive platypuses in recent years on our turf. Subaru tried with the Baja and the low-volume Honda Ridgeline soldiers along largely unchanged, but the genre's biggest adherents are still Down Under, where ute versions of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon live. With a few other examples scattered to the four corners of the earth, that's really about it. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it looks like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could be working to bring it back.
Spied undergoing testing in Michigan, what we appear to be looking at is a heavily disguised Fiat Strada being prepared - like the Fiat Ducato-based Ram ProMaster and the smaller Doblo-based ProMaster City - for Stateside duty as a Ram product. The Strada, for those unfamiliar, is a product of Fiat Automóveis in Brazil and is based on the Palio economy car. The nameplate has been around South America since 1996 and was originally designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (long before Volkswagen monopolized his talents), and takes a more rugged approach in the form of the Strada Adventure.

Dodge vs. Chevy tug-of-war taken to the extreme

They say "idle hands are the devil's playground," but said playgrounds grow to Disney-sized proportions when a pair of jacked-up trucks, two egos, a chain and an empty mall parking lot are involved. Proof of this is the video below, which shows a Cummins-powered Dodge Ram circa 2006 to 2008 chained tail-to-tail with what looks to be a gasoline-powered Chevrolet Silverado from the late 1990s or early 2000s.
We don't necessarily have to tell you who wins this battle, but we'll let you see for yourself the lengths the "winning" driver goes to prove his point. There's plenty of foul language in the video below, so beware that this might be Not Safe For Work, and not that we should have to tell you, but please, do not try this at home.

Chrysler recalling nearly 141k vehicles over electrical woes

Software glitches that randomly illuminate warning lights and cause instrument cluster blackouts are forcing Chrysler to recall 140,800 vehicles, The Detroit News reports. The automaker is recalling 132,000 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokees, 91,559 of which are in the US. In addition to the Jeep recalls, Chrysler is adding 10,800 2014 Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 trucks to the list for similar problems.
Chrysler reportedly says, "Both events occurred infrequently and appeared to resolve themselves by tuning the vehicle's ignition off and then on."
Engineers discovered a problem with the anti-lock-braking system software that causes the instrument cluster display of the Grand Cherokee to illuminate warning lights and black out - even its ABS and electronic stability control systems are affected. To fix the Jeeps, Chrysler will update the vehicle's software.