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Vile Gossip: My Jeep Wrangler dreams

Jean Jennings has been writing about cars for more than 30 years, after stints as a taxicab driver and as a mechanic in the Chrysler Proving Grounds Impact Lab. She was a staff writer at Car and Driver magazine, the first executive editor and former president and editor-in-chief of Automobile Magazine, the founder of the blog Jean Knows Cars and former automotive correspondent for Good Morning America. She has lifetime awards from both the Motor Press Guild and the New England Motor Press Association. Look for more Vile Gossip columns in the future.The new 2018 Jeep Wrangler's model designation is JL, my original initials, as in Jean Lienert. Don't Google that. You'll find I died in 2014 in Pittsburgh at age 85. I take this JL thing as a sign from God that I am supposed to finally buy a new Wrangler, the very first car of my dreams when my dreams included saving $25,000 and living off the grid in a one-room log cabin with all of my cast iron pots and pans. I did live in a tiny log cabin once, but when I discovered there was no line for phone, fax and printer, I trudged down the dirt road a half mile, knocked on a stranger's door and borrowed their phone to call AT&T. So much for living off the grid. And so much for the Wrangler. I bought a truck, which was useful, but it was not a Jeep, a fact confirmed when I landed a job writing about cars. Among the Porsches and Fords and Ferraris and Dodge Power Wagons were Jeep Wranglers. Wranglers meant adventure. Here are two favorites:1981 — Delivering the Pig of Bronze, Car and Driver's over-accessorized 1978 project Jeep CJ-7 (named for its chrome hood ornament), to the police chief of rural Waterloo, Neb. He got it because he wrote the editor a letter asking for it. It was my assignment to drive it there. I plotted as many miles of dirt roads as possible between Michigan and Nebraska, not wanting to waste my first big Jeep adventure on pavement and never questioning the ability of this denim-trimmed orange Jeep and its aftermarket aluminum wheels to get us there.So naive. Somewhere in deepest Iowa with the windshield flipped down to the hood for maximum coolness, the Pig's rear end began to shudder. As we rolled to a stop, the photographer looked back in time to see one of the five fancy extra-long chrome lug nuts plop into the dust. Two others had vanished. The last two had backed off to the ends of their studs.

Stellantis to offer electric versions of most of its European lineup by 2025

Newly merged automaker conglomerate Stellantis will offer electric versions of almost all of its European lineup by 2025, it said on Thursday, as the auto industry faces regulatory pushes in Europe and China to accelerate the shift to zero-emission cars. Formed in January by the merger of France's PSA and Italian-American group Fiat Chrysler, Stellantis is the world’s fourth largest carmaker with 14 brands including Opel, Jeep, Ram and Maserati, and like its peers faces an investor community keen for a road map to an electric lineup to rival Tesla . Speaking during Stellantis' first annual shareholders meeting, Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said that in 2021 the carmaker expects sales of electrified vehicles — that is, both plug-in hybrids and fully electric models — to more than triple to over 400,000 units in 2021. By 2025, electrified vehicles should make up 38% of European sales, a huge jump from the 14% of sales it expects in 2021. Tavares said by 2030 electric models should make up 70% of European sales and 35% of U.S. sales. He said Stellantis will use four electric platforms for passenger vehicles across its 14-brand empire — small, medium and large sizes for cars, and "frame" for high-margin SUVs and pickup trucks. Sweden's Volvo said this month its lineup would be fully electric by 2030, and Ford Motor Co said in February its lineup in Europe would be too. BMW has said at least 50% of its car sales should be fully-electric models by 2030. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the European Union almost trebled to over 1 million vehicles last year, accounting for more than 10% of overall sales. Green Alfa Romeo Fiat Jeep Maserati Citroen Lancia Opel Peugeot Vauxhall Electric Hybrid Stellantis

Jeep Cherokee appears in Chrysler's second Super Bowl spot

The second of three spots produced by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for this year's Super Bowl featured the all-new 2014 Jeep Cherokee. Aired during the game's half time show, the minute-long ad didn't strike as anything new or innovative from an automaker with a reputation for above average Super Bowl spots, but it did show the controversially styled Cherokee in the best light possible.
Called Restless, the commercial shows young, adventurous types doing the sorts of things that young, adventurous types do: surfing, skateboarding, cliff jumping, staring off into the sky with a pensive expression, etc. Scroll down to watch Restless for yourself and let us know in Comments if Jeep managed to hold your attention during half time.