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Dodge hoping Fast & Furious appearance gives Dart a sales jolt [w/video]

According to Automotive News, Chrysler is hoping Fast & Furious 6 will be kind to the Dodge Dart. While the compact sedan doesn't actually show up in the film, Dodge has partnered up with the movie franchise for a new ad featuring the Dart.
Chrysler hasn't exactly seen the high sales numbers it was originally hoping for with the new sedan, thanks in part to a couple of missteps. For starters, most early-production vehicles were only offered with a manual transmission. Analysts believe Chrysler squandered around 95 percent of potential Dart sales because automatic transmission options weren't immediately available.
Right now, the Dodge Dart rakes 19th among compact cars, pulling down 31,064 sales through April. Last month was the company's strongest, with 8,099 units moving off of dealer lots. Unfortunately, the model has also been handicapped by its older sister, the Avenger. With Chrysler throwing heavy incentives at the aging sedan, many consumers have taken advantage of a better deal with the slightly larger, more powerful Avenger.

Chrysler slows minivan production, hasn't built VW Routan this year

Chrysler has slowed production of its Town and Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans this week, Automotive News reports. The Windsor, Ontario plant will cut its three shifts from eight hours each to four hours each in an effort "to align production with market demand," a Chrysler spokesperson told AN. Chrysler also builds the closely related Routan minivan for Volkswagen at its Ontario facility, but has not built a single example thus far in 2013.
Sales of Chrysler's minivans fell 15 percent for the first two months of 2013, and a large part of that has to do with the 26-percent drop of the Grand Caravan alone (the T&C was only down by one percent). According to Automotive News data, as of March 1, Chrysler had an unsold inventory of 24,713 Town and Country models and 18,547 Grand Caravans - a 69- and 43-day supply, respectively.
"No sense running full speed now, then have a lot of vehicles sitting around a few months down the line," Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told AN. Full production is expected to resume again on March 18.

How to turn a Dodge airport tug into a trail slayer

Sometimes, having a ton of fun requires takes a ton of work. Just nine days before the so-called Ultimate Adventure 2014, the folks behind 4-Wheel & Off-Road had 40 tasks to complete in order to turn the ratty truck pictured above into a machine that could excel on treacherous off-road trails while still being able to handle highway jaunts. Much of process behind the build was chronicled on the latest episode of Dirt Every Day.
The team's vehicle started life as a 1990 Dodge tug truck that spent part of its life hauling around airplanes. The builders hung on to the Cummins six-cylinder diesel, but they tossed out practically everything else for the project, with some seriously heavy-duty replacement parts for the transmission, transfer case, axles and a whole lot more. The process was certainly a ton of work, but the end result looks like a fantastic crawler.
Sure, it might have been easier to bring a truck that was already prepared, but where would the fun in that have been? Stay tuned until the end of the video for a few glimpses of the completed Dodge and peek at some of the punishment it goes through.