1998 Dodge Grand Caravan on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2021 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat is here to be the king of all SUVs

This was inevitable, right? The 2021 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat has arrived, and Dodge hasn’t held anything back. FCA has essentially taken its lovely Hellcat engine and dumped it into the largest SUV it sells. Cheers to that. Power from the 6.2-liter supercharged V8 is rated at 710 horses and 645 pound-feet of torque in this application. It has 3 extra ponies beyond the traditional 707-horsepower version, and thatÂ’s probably just so Dodge can call it the most powerful SUV in the world, eking by the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk that has 707. The Durango Hellcat will crack off a 3.5-second 0-60 mph time and hit a top speed of 180 mph, assuming youÂ’re brave enough to take it there. The 0-60-mph time is 0.9 second quicker than a non-supercharged Durango SRT. Dodge pitted the two against each other on a 2.1-mile road course, and the Hellcat completed the lap 1.5 seconds quicker than the base SRT. All the shifting continues to be handled by an eight-speed automatic transmission. Of course, Dodge is also giving the Durango SRT Hellcat more braking and more suspension to handle the extra power. The upgraded suspension is tuned to be more comfortable in Auto mode and offer better handling in Track mode with less roll, less understeer and better rebound control. This is thanks to newly tuned shocks and stiffer top damper mounts. The brakes are upgraded to massive Brembo six-piston calipers in front and four-piston calipers in the rear. They clamp onto vented rotors at all four corners (15.75 inches in front and 13.8 inches in rear). Tires are 295-square, which is the same size as the regular SRT. You can choose between all-season or summer Pirelli tires. 2021 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat View 17 Photos SRT says it tailored the Hellcat engine to the Durango to make sure it could handle sustained track use. It has a unique cooling circuit for the charge air coolers thatÂ’s designed to keep air going to the engine cooler than 140 degrees. The lower front fascia hides a “cold-air scoop” where the Durango pulls air in from. ItÂ’s all spit out through a new exhaust system thatÂ’s definitely going to be loud as hell. Dodge says it features a 260 mm X-pipe, which is the largest in the SRT lineup. From a styling standpoint, the Hellcat stands out from its brethren without looking too ostentatious.

Stellantis sees vehicle loan durations extended amid banking turmoil

Stellantis is seeing clients seeking longer-term financing and leasing deals for their vehicles as a consequence of higher global interest rates, the carmaker's head for the business said. Chief Affiliates Officer Philippe de Rovira said loans which normally had a three-year maturity were now increasingly moved to four years. "This allows customers to get a car for a monthly instalment that is similar to that they had before," he said. The world's third largest carmaker by sales on Tuesday announced it had completed a plan announced in late 2021 to reshuffle and simplify its leasing and financing operations in Europe. Under its terms, Stellantis created a 50-50 single long term multi-brand leasing company named Leasys with Credit Agricole Consumer Finance. It also set up local joint ventures in European countries for its new Stellantis Financial Services unit, formerly Banque PSA Finance, with BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Santander Consumer Finance. "These banks have always had better funding conditions than those we can have as an automaker," de Rovira said. Benefits of the plan included cutting the number of financing and leasing entities the group runs in each country and the number of IT systems it uses, with expected savings exceeding 30% in this particular area, he added. De Rovira said the group had a huge portfolio of orders it had not yet delivered due to supply chain shortages impacting production. "Demand is not our main issue. The issue is to deliver as fast as we can cars that are in our order portfolio, which is still at record levels," he said. The group aims to expand its corporate leased vehicle fleet to more than one million units in 2026 and to double net income from its so-called banking activities to 5.8 billion euros ($6.3 billion) by 2030. De Rovira said Stellantis was not seeing a downward trend in vehicle pricing. "Probably the significant price increases we have seen in 2021 and 2022 will not be repeated because the context is changing, but for the moment we don't see decreases, we see stabilisation". ($1 = 0.9188 euros) (Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari and Gilles Guillaume; Editing by Jan Harvey) Earnings/Financials Plants/Manufacturing Alfa Romeo Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM

Stellantis axed the SRT engineer team, but performance isn't going away

Stellantis has broken up the Street & Racing Technology (SRT) engineering team that created over a dozen high-performance vehicles, including the Dodge Charger Hellcat, but the situation isn't as dire as it sounds. The newly-formed company assigned SRT's former engineers to different positions, where they'll continue to make hot rods. "All of the core elements of the SRT performance engineering team have been integrated into our company's global engineering organization," a spokeswoman told enthusiast website Mopar Insiders. She added that integrating SRT's personnel into other brands in the Stellantis portfolio will ensure that the lessons learned from decades of peddling speed will permeate other products. Previously, SRT operated with a high degree of independence. Don't get too excited. Her statement does not necessarily mean that Citroen will begin building cars powered by the Hellcat engine, though a C3 Chat D'enfer sounds absolutely epic. Technology transfer will likely be limited to fields like aerodynamics and thermal management, and the design department might learn a couple of neat new tricks. Dodge will still move forward with the development of its next SRT-branded cars; the decision to dissolve the SRT team will not affect future models, according to the spokeswoman. Whether they'll be powered by a V8 is up in the air, because company boss Tim Kuniskis warned that regulations are killing the eight-cylinder engine. Similarly, Jeep will continue designing high-performance models, like the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. What changes is that the model will be developed and designed by a group of engineers and designers from Jeep, not from SRT. SRT is dead, but performance isn't going away. SRT's demise nonetheless marks the end of an era for Chrysler. The division traces its roots to 1989, when some of the company's brightest minds were brought together to develop the first-generation Dodge Viper. It merged with Team Prowler to form the Specialty Vehicle Engineering (SVE) group, which was renamed Performance Vehicle Operations (PVO) in 2002 and finally dubbed SRT in 2004. SRT has operated as the carmaker's in-house tuner since, its resume includes a diverse selection of cars ranging from the Neon SRT-4 to the 1500 TRX, and it was promoted to a standalone brand led by designer Ralph Gilles in 2011. Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) axed the SRT brand in 2014 but kept the name and the development team. Related video: