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2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Alaska Cannonball | Into the West

Our man Jonathon Ramsey is driving a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on a 14-week, 14,000 mile journey across North America. Check out his first and second installments. DOVE CREEK, Colo. – Last week I hopped off the Oklahoma panhandle into Grenville, New Mexico. After a tight right-left on Grenville's Lake Road, the tarmac fell away into immense, scrub-filled valleys rimmed by rock spires and elevated mesas. Pushing into Colorado from the southeast, elevation and high-plains beauty come quickly. It's like driving through the imaginary Arcadias on bottled water labels, or one of those 5,000-piece puzzle sets that grandparents and aunts devote months and bottles of gin to. I'm shacked up in Dove Creek's surprisingly quaint Country Inn because rain. Here are some notes from the road. For lack of time and space, I only mentioned the Jeep Collection in Suwanee, Georgia in passing last week. Once more: if you're a fan of Jeeps and you get to the Atlanta metro area, I highly recommend a visit — and look at the pictures at the bottom of this article. The 2018 Wrangler Rubicon I'm driving now sports Willys icons on the gear shift lever, windshield, and wheels, and when you turn the rig on, a graphic in the dash cluster morphs from a Willys into a JL Wrangler. Jeep insists on carrying the torch of its origins, so I found it edifying to sit in all four of those origins at the Jeep Collection. I can tell you this: the Americans who fought WWII were a lot smaller than we are. What am I driving? The Monroney titles it a 2018 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4X4, with a base price of $40,495. It's been plumped with these options: Leather ($1,495), Customer Preferred Package 24R (Cold Weather Group, $895), Trailer Tow HD Electrical Group ($795), LED Lighting ($895), Electronic Infotainment System Group with 8.4-inch Uconnect and Alpine Premium Audio ($1,295), Steel Bumper Group ($1,295), Trail Rail Management System ($195), All-Weather Floor Mats ($130), 8-Speed Automatic Transmission ($2,000), Premium Black Sunrider Soft Top ($595), and 17-inch black wheels with polished lips ($895). Add the $1,195 destination charge, and a customer paying MSRP would need to pony up $52,175 to take it home. Regarding my previous list of aftermarket bits, the Mopar rock rails are so well integrated that I forgot to mention them. They have come in handy. The Mopar grab handles, however, aren't so handy. The hard rubber grips hang from the roof by nylon straps, next to the front windows.

Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.

Stellantis wants to outfit cars with AI software to drive revenue

MILAN — Carmaker Stellantis announced a strategy Tuesday to embed AI-enabled software in 34 million vehicles across its 14 brands, hoping the tech upgrade will help it bring in 20 billion euros ($22.6 billion) in annual revenue by 2030. CEO Carlos Tavares heralded the move as part of a strategy that would transform the car company into a “sustainable mobility tech company,” with business growth coming from features and services tied to the internet. That includes using voice commands to activate navigation, make payments and order products online. The company is expanding existing partnerships with BMW on partially automated driving, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn on customized cockpits and Waymo to push their autonomous driving work into light commercial vehicle delivery fleets. StellantisÂ’ embrace of artificial intelligence and expansion of software-enabled vehicles is part of a broad transformation in the auto industry, with a race toward more fully electric and hybrid propulsion systems, more autonomous driving features and increased connectivity in automobiles. Ford and General Motors also are banking on dramatically increased revenue from similar online subscription services. But the automakers face immense competition for monthly consumer spending from movie and music streaming services, news outlets, Amazon Prime and others. Stellantis, which was formed from the combination of PSA Peugeot and FCA Fiat Chrysler, said the software would seamlessly integrate into customers' lives, with the capability of live updates providing upgraded services over time. New products will include the possibility to subscribe to automated driving features, purchase usage-based car insurance or even increase the power of the vehicle with a tune-up to add horsepower. As a baseline, Stellantis generates 400 million euros in revenue on software-generated services installed in 12 million vehicles. To meet the targets, Stellantis will expand its software engineering team of 1,000 to 4,500 in North America, Asia and Europe. More than 1,000 of the expanded team will be retrained in house. Stellantis also announced a new partnership with Foxconn to develop semiconductors to cover 80% of the companyÂ’s needs and simplify the supply chain. The first microchips from the partnership are targeted to be installed in vehicles in 2024.