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Dodge pulls New Girl and The Office stars for new Dart spots

Dodge is hoping that a heavy dash of humor helps it move some more units of the Dart with a hilarious ad campaign called Don't Touch My Dart. The spots star actors Craig Robinson, best known for his role as Darryl on The Office, and Jake Johnson from New Girl as neighbors and friends playing a game of one-upmanship over Robinson's new car. Johnson is envious of the ride and just wants to touch it.
The ads are pretty funny if you're a fan of somewhat absurdist humor, and Robinson has just the right amount of over-the-top seriousness to really make the commercials work. They have kind of a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote vibe with Johnson constantly in inept pursuit of what he wants, but he clearly isn't getting it.
The first four spots in the campaign are already online, but according to Dodge this is just the beginning. The company says that it's planning about 24 different versions of these ads in various lengths to play on TV and online. You can check out the ads titled First Scratch, Birdhouse Police Garage Door and Voice Touching below, along with the brand's release about the new ads. There's also a pretty good gag on its YouTube page with Robinson protecting his Dart.

Chrysler readying Hellcat V8 with Viper-like power

A monstrous supercharged V8 engine could be in store for Chrysler and SRT products, if recent rumors are to be believed. Allpar is reporting that the forced-induction V8 - Chrysler's first, if this goes down - could make its debut this summer.
The story goes that the Hellcat would be based on a 6.2-liter Hemi engine, rather than on the existing 5.7- or 6.4-liter versions of the company's vaunted mill. In any case, the general consensus is that the motor will have gobs of power. Modest estimates call for between 500 to 570 horsepower, with some outliers predicting a figure as high as 600 hp. That figure would put the output would place the Hellcat awfully close to that of the 640-hp V10 in the SRT Viper, too. Allpar contends that a slightly lower powered version would allow Chrysler to keep costs below that of the more powerful Ford Shelby GT500, which might be a sweet spot.
The Hellcat could debut in a number of SRT products. SRT versions of the Charger, Challenger and 300 are all up for grabs, as is the rumored SRT Barracuda.

Junkyard Gem: 1986 Dodge Ram 50

After years of selling the Isuzu Faster with Chevrolet LUV badges here, GM replaced it with the S-10 in 1982. Ford sold Mazda Proceeds with Courier badges for even more years, but ditched the Courier once the Ranger became available as a 1983 model. Chrysler was able to put truck beds on Omnirizons at that time, but didn't have the deep pockets to develop its own rear-wheel-drive small pickup; for this reason, Dodge-badged Mitsubishi Forte pickups continued to be available in the United States all the way through the 1994 model year. Here's one of those trucks, found in a Colorado car graveyard. The first Chrysler-imported Mitsubishi Fortes showed up in the United States as 1979 models. The Dodge-badged version was known as the D-50, while Plymouth dealers got theirs with Arrow badges. The Dodge D-50 became the Ram 50 for the 1981 model year, while the final Plymouth Arrow trucks were sold as 1982 models. Just to make things more interesting, Mitsubishi started selling its own vehicles in the United States beginning with the 1983 model year. That meant that the Ram 50 had to compete for sales with a near-identical twin sporting Mitsubishi badges. Things in the Chrysler-Mitsubishi universe got even more exciting a bit later, when there were four marques selling essentially the same car here simultaneously: the Mitsubishi Mirage, Plymouth Colt, Dodge Colt and Eagle Summit. All of the Dodge D-50s and Ram 50s came with Mitsubishi power under their hoods. This one has a 2.0-liter SOHC straight-four rated at 88 horsepower and 108 pound-feet. For a while, a 2.3-liter Mitsubishi diesel was available in the Ram 50. It had been discontinued by 1986, however. This one has the base five-speed manual transmission. It appears that this truck was being used for long-term storage of many, many boxes of random household stuff when it was banished to this place. Much of the stuff was scattered on the ground nearby. Perhaps it was parked at a rent-a-storage facility and got evicted for lack of rent payments. Much of the contents consisted of stacks of newspapers and magazines from the 1960s and 1970s. Here's an Art Buchwald column about then-Vice President Spiro Agnew from February 23, 1971. Here's a Beetle Bailey strip from the same year. There's plenty of history in the junkyard, if you know where to look. There must have been a half-ton of paper in this truck when it arrived here. Sadly, some family's photo albums were here as well.