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Speedkore roaring into SEMA with twin-turbo AWD Charger Hellcat Widebody

Speedkore Performance is nowhere near finished with the Dodge Charger. At last year's SEMA show, the Wisconsin-based tuner showed a 1970 Charger Evolution with carbon and aluminum body panels, and a 996-horsepower Hellcat engine yoked to a six-speed transmission. This year the company teased a profile rendering of a 2020 Charger Hellcat Widebody on Facebook with the line, "All we're going to say is this all-wheel drive, twin-turbo, widebody Charger is going to be unveiled at the Magnaflow booth." Mopar Insiders extracted a tad more information, the first being that we're in for another tuned version of the 6.2-liter Demon Hemi V8 that's swapped its supercharger for twin turbos, and produces more than 1,000 horsepower. Last year, alongside that 1970 Charger, Speedkore unveiled a twin-turbo Hellcat-powered Demon making almost 1,400 horsepower. We don't know yet if this year's Charger will match that output — or exceed it — but we have a benchmark. An all-wheel-drive powertrain divides those horses so the tires have a chance of conquering them. Speedkore's mum on the mechanicals; the firm could have swiped a Grand Cherokee Trackhawk AWD unit and beefed it up, or created its own system.  Some of the steel body panels get carbon fiber replacements, and see those two holes in he front wheel arch? Those are exhaust outlets. MagnaFlow created a custom exhaust with a driver-selectable switch to port gases out the front, say at the track when decibels don't matter, or to send waste through MagnaFlow mufflers and out the rear pipes when silence is required.  The reveal happens at the Magnaflow booth in SEMA's Central Hall on November 5. Those that can't make the show can watch the reveal on MagnaFlowÂ’s Facebook page.

Ford, Chrysler and Mazda expand scope of Takata airbag recalls

The scope of the Takata airbag inflator recall is ballooning once again across the United States. Where Honda has elected to take its driver-side airbag campaign nationwide, Chrysler Group and Ford have now announced expanded regional actions to cover some passenger-side airbag inflators. Mazda is adding more regions, as well. For Chrysler Group, the campaign covers the inflators on 149,150 examples of the 2003-model-year Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups. The recall is limited to vehicles sold or ever registered in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. The company will begin notifying affected customers on January 19. According to Chrysler's announcement of the action, the passenger side inflators in these trucks "are of a type that is not used in any of the other vehicles affected by Chrysler Group's regional field action." The automaker says that it's not aware of any actual failures or accidents in these pickups and even claims there are no "observed failures in laboratory testing of its airbag modules." The company is continuing to study the problem, though. Ford is taking a similar step by issuing a recall of inflators for 38,500 examples of the 2004-2005 Ranger and 2005-2006 Ford GT. The campaign only affects vehicles originally sold or ever registered in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Certain zip codes of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa are also covered. There's already precedent for passenger-side airbags to be covered under the Takata inflator recall. When many automakers announced campaigns in June, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota all included that side in some of their repairs. Subaru subsequently did, as well. In addition, Mazda is expanding the scope of its recall to add Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Saipan, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to the affected areas. The company estimates that it has a total of 86,773 vehicles in need of repair. Mazda is also teaming with Toyota to begin independent testing of the Takata inflators. Scroll down to read all of the automakers' announcements of these newly expanded recalls. Statement: Air-Bag Inflators December 3, 2014 , Auburn Hills, Mich.

Could self-driving cars stop terrorist attacks?

Terrorists have taken to using a weapon that's easy to obtain and can do a lot of damage: ordinary vehicles, driven into crowds. A Department of Homeland Security-FBI bulletin from 2012 warned that "vehicle-ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience." CNN recently listed nine vehicle-based terrorist attacks that have occurred within the past year, and in just in the past three months incidents in New York, Edmonton and Barcelona have claimed more than 20 lives and injured dozens after ISIS-affiliated drivers plowed into pedestrians. The deadliest so far was a Bastille Day attack in Nice, France that killed 86 people after a terrorist drove a truck into a crowd following a fireworks display. CNN also reported that "Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch encouraged its recruits in the West to use trucks as weapons," and noted that a 2010 article in the terrorist group's webzine called for deploying a truck as a "mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah." Such attacks have been more common in Europe and other places where guns are harder to get, making vehicles violent and readily available weapons. But it's not only ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists that have turned cars into weapons. A man with white nationalist ties drove a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring dozens more. Some believe that autonomous vehicle technology could help stop these tragedies. "Terrorist attacks like the one in New York are a good example of why we need AVs more quickly," Caleb Watney, technology policy associate at the R Street Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, recently told the website Inverse. Dr. Junfeng Jiao, director of the Urban Information Lab at the University of Texas, told Inverse that "these tragedies may be taken into account by the makers such as Tesla and Google" when developing autonomous technology. "This is a huge opportunity for the next generation to de-weaponize cars," he added. Many vehicles already have forward collision warning with emergency autonomous braking, and a few combine it with pedestrian detection, although the latter technology typically works at speeds below 20 mph.