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2018 Dodge Challenger Demon, 1970 Charger become Lego cars

As much as we all would have loved to buy one, Dodge made sure that it wouldn't be easy for everyone to own a 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. It was only built for one model year, with a total of 3,000 units, and the last one was built last summer. And even if they were still available, each one started at just under $85,000, a substantial chunk of change. But thanks to Lego, there's a comparatively cheap way to get a new Demon: in tiny brick form. The toy company has added another kit to its Speed Champions line featuring a yellow Challenger Demon. Since the Speed Champions cars are quite small, it's a somewhat rough facsimile of the car, but it's still instantly recognizable. It's blocky, it has a big hood scoop and fat fender flares. It also has two sets of wheel covers to customize it. This kit has an advantage over a real Demon, too: it comes with a second car. The other one is a 1970 Dodge Charger in black. This is an even more faithful rendition, thanks in part to the real car's ruler-straight lines. It doesn't have customizable wheels, but you can choose whether to leave it stock, or stick on a little replica of a supercharger and hood scoop that poke through the hood. It ends up looking like Dominic Toretto's Charger from The Fast and the Furious. Besides the second car, the kit features a drag strip starting tree. It doesn't light up, but it does have a slider on the back that lifts up each set of colored bricks as it's pressed down. So you can have little drag races with the two cars. In total, everything is built with 478 pieces, and it will cost you $29.99. The kit is available now wherever Lego kits are sold, and even at the Dodge merchandise website. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Fiat Chrysler dumped 40,000 unordered vehicles on dealers

In a move that echoes recent history, Fiat Chrysler has been making more cars and trucks than dealers in the U.S. are willing to accept, with Bloomberg reporting that at one point the automaker had built up a glut of around 40,000 unordered vehicles. That’s led some dealers to accuse FCA of reviving the dreaded “sales bank” accounting practice of obscuring inventory to improve the balance sheet. The company reportedly began building up its inventory of unordered cars this summer despite an industrywide slowdown in sales and an eagerness by some dealers to thin their inventories because rising interest rates are making it more expensive to hold unsold cars. The inventory build-up also coincided with Fiat ChryslerÂ’s efforts to find a merger partner, first with Renault, which fell through, then last monthÂ’s announcement that it will merge with FranceÂ’s PSA Group. FCA denies any such scheme and tells Bloomberg the rising inventory is down to a new predictive analytics system designed to better square supply with demand from dealers that is helping the company save money and narrow the numbers of unsold vehicles. The company recently agreed to pay a $40 million civil penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a complaint that it paid dealers to report fake sales figures over a span of five years. While no one is suggesting that FCA is in dire financial straits — the company saw higher than expected earnings in the third quarter and record profits in North America — the practice has strong historical precedent by Chrysler, which built up bloated inventories in the run-up to its two federal bailouts, in 1980 and 2009. It was also common at GM and Ford during the 2000s, when all three Detroit automakers struggled with excess manufacturing capacity and plummeting sales in the lead-up to the Great Recession. Back in 2012, CFO Magazine wrote about a report that explained automakersÂ’ rationale for the practice and how it works: Say fixed costs for a given factory are $100, and that the factory can make 50 cars. Consumers, however, demand only 10. Under absorption costing, if the company makes all 50 cars, its cost-per-car is $2. If it makes only up to demand, or 10 cars, the cost-per-car is $10. Although each car adds variable costs for steel and other parts, if those costs are low, the company still has an incentive to make more cars to keep the cost-per-car down.

2 men die in Dodge Challenger Hellcat crash at Colorado airport

Two friends died in the crash of a Dodge Challenger Hellcat over the weekend after they shot off the end of an airport runway, authorities said. That someone died in a 707-horsepower Hellcat is, sadly, not unexpected. But two aspects of the story are remarkable. First, the men's ages: The Denver Post reports the crash victims were Lynd Fitzgerald, 71, of Colorado Springs, and his passenger, Roger Lichtenberger, 76, of San Marcos, Calif. Second, their speed: The car was likely moving at over 100 miles per hour, authorities said. The men had permission to use the 8,300-foot runway at Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista. That's more than a mile and a half long. But when the car left the runway, it went 300 feet before flying over a ravine, hitting the ground, becoming airborne again, flipping end over end across a second ravine, and ultimately landing on its wheels 650 feet past the end of the pavement. Responding police officers tried to provide first aid, but the men were declared dead at the scene. "They were just test-driving this car. They went a little too fast. I don't want to surmise. ... They probably got to the end of the runway and, at that speed, didn't realize they were there so fast. And they lost control. It was just too high a speed and they got to the end of the runway," said Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze. There were skid marks near the end of the runway, but the sheriff didn't know the length. "I've never seen anything like it," Spezze told the newspaper. "They had permission to be there. There were no laws broken." Related Video: