1972 Dodge Charger Rallye on 2040-cars

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2025 SRT Hellcat concepts as previewed by high schoolers

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has some very talented designers in its ranks. Like any good company, though, the automaker is always on the lookout for early talent. Even if they're still in high school. One of those talent-seeking initiatives is the company's Drive for Design contest, an event open to tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade students that are hoping for a future in design. For this year's event, students from across the country were given a shot to design their vision for a 2025 model-year Dodge SRT Hellcat. The results are impressive, as you can see in the gallery above. First place went to Ben Treinen, from Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati. Second place was the only award to go to a student outside the Rust Belt, with Macon, GA's Harrison Kunselman, a student at Mount de Sales Academy taking the silver. Third place was won by a metro Detroiter – Bloomfield Hills High School student Hwanseong Jang, while fourth went to Andrew Gombac of Loyola Academy in Wilmette, IL. According to FCA, all four winners will have their sketches on display at the 2016 Autorama at Cobo Center at the end of February. They'll also win some pretty nifty prizes. First place will get a new Apple MacBook Pro, while second, third, and fourth get the new Apple iPad Pro and Apple Pencil (arguably just as good of a prize for budding designers). All four finishers will also attend a three-week automotive design course at Detroit's prestigious College for Creative Studies, have dinner with FCA designers, and score three passes to Autorama. FCA will cover travel and lodging to Auburn Hills. Read on for the official blast from FCA. Related Video: FCA US Design Team Announces Winners of Drive for Design Contest January 19, 2016 , Auburn Hills, Mich. - The FCA US LLC Design team today announced four winners in this year's Drive for Design contest. The FCA US Drive for Design contest challenged U.S. high school students in grades 10-12 to design a Dodge SRT Hellcat for the year 2025. "The Drive for Design contest continues to be a great way for the FCA US Design team to connect with students that show an interest in art and design," said Mark Trostle – Head of Dodge and SRT Design, FCA US LLC.

FCA issues recall for 300k Dodge Chargers over airbag sensor

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has issued another recall, this time for the Dodge Charger. The issue stems from an overly sensitive control module that could deploy the side-curtain airbag and seatbelt pretensioner if the door is kicked or slammed too hard. The recall affects certain Charger sedans from the 2011-2014 model years, specifically those manufactured between May 6, 2010, and June 5, 2014. All told, that amounts to an estimated 322,078 units, including 284,153 in the United States, another 13,169 in Canada, 2,484 in Mexico, and 22,272 overseas. Owners of those vehicles will be asked to bring their vehicles in to their local dealers to have the Occupant Restraint Control module recalibrated, and are being advised in the meantime to "exercise caution when closing doors." If this issue sounds familiar, that's because the automaker issued a similar recall for Ram trucks just last week, affecting over 667,000 four-door pickups in the United States alone. Following a further investigation into its passenger cars, FCA found a similar problem with the Charger, whose door design mandated specific calibration of the module in question for that model. The company says it is aware of three minor injuries potentially related to the issue, but no accidents. This campaign is just the latest in a string of recall-related issues to have emerged from Auburn Hills recently. The Ram truck recall was issued in tandem with another airbag-related recall for a further million pickups. Prior to that it called in another 1.4 million vehicles to update their infotainment system software due to a security issue. Another 350,000 Dodge Journeys were called in before that to have their engine covers secured. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to issue the company a massive hundred-million-dollar fine for failing to follow proper procedures related to safety and recall issues. Meanwhile, another NHTSA investigation that could have affected 4.7 million units was closed with no further action deemed necessary. And an appeal court judge in Georgia reduced the damages the company will be ordered to pay the family of a child who died in a fire in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Statement: Occupant Restraint Control Module August 1, 2015 , Auburn Hills, Mich. - FCA US LLC is conducting a voluntary safety recall to recalibrate control modules on approximately 284,153 U.S.-market sedans to prevent inadvertent side-curtain air-bag and seatbelt pre-tensioner deployment.

Brand new cars are being sold with defective Takata airbags

If you just bought a 2016 Audi TT, 2017 Audi R8, 2016–17 Mitsubishi i-MiEV, or 2016 Volkswagen CC, we have some unsettling news for you. A report provided to a US Senate committee that oversees the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and reported on by Automotive News claims these vehicles were sold with defective Takata airbags. And it gets worse. Toyota and FCA are called out in the report for continuing to build vehicles that will need to be recalled down the line for the same issue. That's not all. The report also states that of the airbags that have been replaced already in the Takata recall campaign, 2.1 million will need to eventually be replaced again. They don't have the drying agent that prevents the degradation of the ammonium nitrate, which can lead to explosions that can destroy the airbag housing and propel metal fragments at occupants. So these airbags are out there already. We're not done yet. There's also a stockpile of about 580,000 airbags waiting to be installed in cars coming in to have their defective airbags replaced. These 580k airbags also don't have the drying agent. They'll need to be replaced down the road, too. A new vehicle with a defective Takata airbag should be safe to drive, but that margin of safety decreases with time. If all this has you spinning around in a frustrated, agitated mess, there's a silver lining that is better than it sounds. So take a breath, run your fingers through your hair, and read on. Our best evidence right now demonstrates that defective Takata airbags – those without the drying agent that prevents humidity from degrading the ammonium nitrate propellant – aren't dangerous yet. It takes a long period of time combined with high humidity for them to reach the point where they can rupture their housing and cause serious injury. It's a matter of years, not days. So a new vehicle with a defective Takata airbag should be safe to drive, but that margin of safety decreases with time – and six years seems to be about as early as the degradation happens in the worst possible scenario. All this is small comfort for the millions of people who just realized their brand-new car has a time bomb installed in the wheel or dashboard, or the owners who waited patiently to have their airbags replaced only to discover that the new airbag is probably defective in the same way (although newer and safer!) as the old one.