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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

2019 Dodge Challenger, Charger salute troops with Stars and Stripes Edition

For the New York Auto Show, Dodge is showing off a new style package for the 2019 Dodge Challenger and Charger that goes by the name Stars and Stripes. As you may have guessed, the new package is military-themed as a salute to American troops. And since Dodge claims the Challenger and Charger have more active military buyers than any other car in their respective segments, this seems like a good move. What makes the Stars and Stripes models unique starts with a black and silver center stripe along with black wheels, badging, and American flag fender decals. Cars with four-piston Brembo brake calipers get the calipers painted in bronze. This matches the interior, which is finished in black cloth with bronze stitching everywhere from the steering wheel to the door panels. The finishing touches are bronze embroidered stars on the seats. The whole package is available on Scat Pack and R/T versions of the Challenger and Charger, plus the Challenger GT and the Charger GT RWD. It also adds $1,995 to the base price of each car. Besides the Stars and Stripes package, Dodge has expanded availability of two other packages. The first is the Painted Satin Black Appearance Package, which was initially exclusive to the Demon and Challenger Hellcat, but will now be available on the Charger Hellcat. It adds a hand-painted hood, roof, trunk and spoiler to the car and runs $3,450. The other package is the Brass Monkey Package. It's now available on Challenger and Charger Scat Pack, R/T and Challenger GT and Charger GT RWD models. It adds bronze-painted 20-inch wheels, satin black badging, fuel door lid and spoiler, and it costs $795.

Dodge designer on yellow plastic splitter guards: 'I wish they would take them off'

About a year ago, Dodge began placing yellow strips of plastic on the leading edge of Charger and Challenger front splitters to prevent damage during transport from plant to dealer. Dodge embossed "To Be Removed By Dealer" into the plastic, but those instructions weren't always followed. By summer of 2018, so many owners had left the tabs on, or reinstalled a discarded set, or bought a set on eBay for $100 or more, that factions broke out. Some thought the protectors looked cool, some thought they looked foolish, some thought it didn't matter either way. Now Dodge and SRT lead designer Mark Trostle has stepped in with his thoughts, those being, "I wish they would take them off."  Trostle made the remarks at the end of a video by Canadian auto scribe Brian Makse that otherwise dove into the design and technology on the 2010 Charger Widebody. Part of the designer's remarks related to aesthetic aspects — designers are paid to be precious about every line they draw, after all. "When we did the sketch for the Charger and Challenger," he said, "it never had yellow strips on it," and, "To me, as a designer, it ruins the lines of the car." He had a functional reason as well, though: "You're just ruining the paint!" The paint issue convinced Tyler Grant, the Internet sales manager at a Dodge dealer, to make a Facebook post in April this year requesting owners remove the splitter guards. Grant wrote that because the guards aren't specifically molded to fit perfectly, dirt and moisture get between the plastic and the splitter and mar the clear coat or paint, illustrated by a scuffed example that had been driven just 18 miles with the protectors on. He ended with, "Please, on behalf of your splitter AND its paint, take off the splitter guards." Despite forum chatter, splitter-shaming Facebook photos, and Facebook groups like "Hey Pal, You Forgot to Take Your Splitter Guards Off," it appears too late for the protector color to curb (get it?) the trend. Owners have already dealt with the dirt issue by putting protective tape on the air dam, others have painted the spilitter guards to match the car, and the owner of a vintage Dodge pickup ran yellow tape across the width of his front bumper in an attempt to join the party.  In the Makse video, Trostle said that the automaker would soon be rolling out a "new fashionable purple color" for the protectors. "We'll see if that one takes off," he said. "I hope it doesn't."