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Junkyard Gem: 1983 Jeep DJ-5L Mail Dispatcher

When it comes to putting mail in boxes, a simple and reliable vehicle works best. Say, a zero-frills steel box on wheels, with right-hand-drive, a fuel-efficient four-cylinder engine, no-hassle automatic transmission, sliding doors, and a big mail-sorting table instead of a passenger seat. That's what the AM General Mail Dispatcher DJ-5 was all about, and these bouncy little trucks were everywhere for decades. Here's a late-production example, still in USPS colors, spotted in a Denver-area self-service wrecking yard. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed this courier from the swift completion of its appointed rounds. Note the "Sonic Eagle" USPS logos on the doors; this became the official USPS logo in 1993, nearly a decade after the final Jeep DJ-5s were built. Plenty of these trucks stayed in service into our current century, and a few are still being used by private mail-delivery contractors in rural areas. During the American Motors era of Jeep DJ production (1970 through 1984), a bewildering assortment of engines went into postal Jeeps. This is a 2.5-liter GM Iron Duke four-cylinder; before that, DJ-5s came with Audi power (more or less the same engine used in the Porsche 924, in fact), AMC straight-sixes, and Chevy Nova four-cylinders. The 1984 DJ-5Ms ran the AMC 2.5-liter four-cylinder. The earliest DJs were equipped with three-speed manual transmissions, but the American Motors-built postal-delivery versions all had automatic transmissions. This one has a three-speed Chrysler Torqueflite A904, a weird engine/transmission combination that should help you stump your friends during car-trivia debates. Check out the ultra-bare-bones heater/ventilation controls! These trucks were badged as AM Generals, not Jeeps (I couldn't find a single Jeep label anywhere on this one), just like the original HMMWV. However, you'd have to be a real hair-splitter to refer to this as an AM General DJ-5 instead of just Mail Jeep or Jeep DJ-5. Next time you complain about your subcompact rental car lacking driver-comfort features, consider this vehicle. I had a few high-school friends who owned DJ-5s, back in the early 1980s when they were available for a couple hundred bucks at government-surplus auctions. The first thing civilian DJ-5 owners always did was tear out the mail-sorting table and replace it with a random junkyard bucket seat (or an aluminum lawn chair). These trucks were very noisy, very bouncy, and very slow, but they always ran.

Jeep gunning to build 250,000 Cherokees a year

Contrary to what a certain politician may have said last year about Jeep moving to China, the automaker is in fact doing the opposite, with plans to greatly increase the production capacity at its Toledo North Assembly plant in Ohio. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that there are big plans for the 2014 Jeep Cherokee and Toledo North, as a local union president has informed the newspaper that Chrysler is planning to produce around 250,000 examples of the new midsize utility per year.
To put this number into context, 250,000 units is more than what Jeep Liberty sales totaled here over the last three years combined. Even taking into consideration that the 250,000 units will be distributed beyond US borders, that's an ambitious volume figure full-stop - and that's without taking into consideration the new Cherokee's love/hate design. In its favor, though, Jeep is making remarkable inroads globally as of late, and the Cherokee's size could work well in emerging markets. To get that kind of output from Toledo's Cherokee assembly line, Chrysler will reportedly hire 1,105 new workers - that's in addition to the 200 workers already being hired to build the popular Jeep Wrangler, which is itself expected to top 220,000 units this year.

Watch thief steal Jeep Wrangler with laptop

Advancements in technology, especially those in the automotive sector, have made cars safer, easier to drive, and harder than ever to steal. But a recent incident in Houston, TX, reveals that the latest generation of hackers and thieves knows how to use modern tech for their own nefarious devices. A car thief was caught on camera using a small computer to pilfer a 2010 Jeep Wrangler parked in its owner's driveway. The video shows a man entering the Wrangler and after a few minutes on the laptop, driving away in the vehicle. According to the Wall Street Journal, Houston police believe the same method could have been used on four other occasions involving late-model Wranglers and Cherokees. While the short clip looks like something out of a movie, this isn't the first time a Jeep has been hacked. The theft took the pair of thieves roughly 13 minutes from the time the first person opens the hood (not shown) to when the car leaves the driveway. Alarmingly, the Houston police department isn't sure what the laptop is being used for, the Journal reports. A Fiat Chrysler official told the newspaper that the thieves in the Houston incident might be using tools that only dealers have access to, which would allow them to pair another key fob to the vehicle. While that explains how they got into the vehicle, it still doesn't explain how a laptop could be used to get the vehicle running – especially when automakers ( Fiat Chrysler, Tesla, and General Motors) have altered their cars' electronics to reduce hacking. Theft rates have dropped by 96 percent since 1990, according to The New York Times, but recent events show thieves are making their own advances, prompting increased cyber protection efforts from automakers, auto-parts suppliers, and the government. It will come into focus later this month when US Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx, Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green, and General Motors' chairman and CEO Mary Barra speak at a cybersecurity summit in Detroit. Related Video: News Source: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Wire, YouTube Jeep Technology SUV Off-Road Vehicles Videos viral video hacking thieves