2007 Dodge Magnum Srt8 6.1l Hemi on 2040-cars

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Ram to go on a Rampage with new small pickup?

When people look back at today's automotive industry, what do you think they'll remember us for? The emergence of hybrids? Ever more expensive and exotic supercars? The dawn of the self-driving car? All likely scenarios, but so is the blurring of lines between one bodystyle and another, giving rise to hardtop convertible coupes and crossovers of every shape and size. But one bodystyle the North American auto industry has stayed largely away from in the past couple of decades is a car nose and chassis with a pickup bed.
It's a bodystyle immortalized by the Chevrolet El Camino, but with few exceptions, we haven't seen too many of these automotive platypuses in recent years on our turf. Subaru tried with the Baja and the low-volume Honda Ridgeline soldiers along largely unchanged, but the genre's biggest adherents are still Down Under, where ute versions of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon live. With a few other examples scattered to the four corners of the earth, that's really about it. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it looks like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could be working to bring it back.
Spied undergoing testing in Michigan, what we appear to be looking at is a heavily disguised Fiat Strada being prepared - like the Fiat Ducato-based Ram ProMaster and the smaller Doblo-based ProMaster City - for Stateside duty as a Ram product. The Strada, for those unfamiliar, is a product of Fiat Automóveis in Brazil and is based on the Palio economy car. The nameplate has been around South America since 1996 and was originally designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (long before Volkswagen monopolized his talents), and takes a more rugged approach in the form of the Strada Adventure.

2015 Dodge Viper getting small increase in power

The Viper is used to being the most powerful car in the Dodge and SRT stables, but the arrival of the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat means that's no longer the case. The serpentine supercar is, however, reportedly getting a small boost in output for 2015, amounting to all of five horsepower.
The increase was uncovered by Road & Track courtesy of the SAE J1349 certification process to which Detroit's Big Three automakers submit themselves and which reports the Viper's output at 645 hp instead of the 640 it was rated at until now. There are a hundred factors that could have contributed to the relatively mild boost in output (best guess? nothing at all changed...), but we doubt anyone's going to complain about some extra horses under the hood.
The five-horsepower boost brings the Viper that much closer to the 650-hp Chevy Corvette Z06, not to mention the 707-hp Hellcat, but the Viper's impressive power-to-weight ratio ought to mean it'll have little problem keeping up in a straight line - which is just one of the reasons why Chrysler won't shoe-horn the Hellcat into the Viper: as R&T points out, the supercharged engine is too heavy and the blower makes it too tall to fit in the Viper's engine bay.

Mopar '13 Dart is a bruiser of a compact

For the fourth year in a row, Mopar is offering a limited-production car decked with a plenty of add-ons and a unique look. This year's black-and-blue car is the Mopar '13 Dart, which was unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show with the now-signature paint scheme. Like previous Mopar models, only 500 of the '13 Darts will be built. Past models include the Mopar '10 Challenger, Mopar '11 Charger and the Mopar '12 300.
The all-black Dart gets a brightly contrasting, offset blue stripe running the full length of the car, and other styling mods like the aero-tuned body kit, gloss black grille, wheels and mirror caps. Curiously, Mopar chose to stick with the Dart's standard headlights rather than the darker, smoked lights. The interior gets a similar black-and-blue treatment, but this unique cabin features a blue leather driver's seat to go along with the black leather seating for the rest of the passengers.
More than just a styling package, the Mopar '13 Dart also gets some performance and handling goodies to complement the Dart's turbocharged 1.4-liter engine, such as upgraded brakes with slotted rotors, a lowered suspension, retuned electric power steering and a "sport-tuned" exhaust system.