2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited Sport Utility 4-door 4.7l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Jeep and Ram do the pre-Super Bowl ad thing again

Fiat Chrysler is experimenting this year with pre-Super Bowl advertising that isn't — yet — Super Bowl advertising. The automaker's released five ads so far this week for Jeep and Ram. including two more today for the new Ram heavy duty trucks. But at the moment there are no plans to run them during the game. With a new focus on efficiency, the marketing team at Auburn Hills wants to see how the spots play online. The latest long-form Ram ads are called "Roll Rams Roll" and "Fourth Quarter," to go along with the long-form spot, "Make Sure of It," featuring the new voice of Ram commercials, actor Jeremy Renner. The latter spot represents the beginning of a collaboration with Ram and Renner. The wide-ranging actor will provide vocals for Ram's new campaign called "Led or Be Led" that begins later this month. "Roll Rams Roll" presents the classic scenario of two folks arriving at a four-way intersection at the same time. This time, however, one party is a seriously gung-ho tailgating crew in a Ram 3500 HD pulling a giant travel trailer, the other is a ginormous herd of Rams that have come from across the country to see their namesakes play. "Fourth Quarter" celebrates the unheralded workers who, like the best players, give their all until the final whistle, no matter how long it takes for that whistle to blow. Over in the Jeep-verse, fresh off of crushing a 1963 Gladiator, the off-road brand continues the association with the band OneRepublic that began last summer. The group mostly lets the images do the singing in the spot "More Than Just Words," which pairs the lyrics of the U.S. national anthem with representative visuals. FCA marketing honcho Olivier Francois called the week's commercials "a taste of what's to come." Whether that taste comes during the game, we don't know. Spots are rumored to cost $5.5 million for 30 seconds this year, up from $5.2 million last year, which comes on top of production costs that run into the millions. If an ad does well online, there's a chance it could appear during the show in Atlanta. Otherwise, you can check them out above and below, and watch out for rumored multi-brand Twitter shenanigans during the game. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences.

Vile Gossip: Ladies who launch

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 year was 2006. We were driving a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 across the Florida Panhandle from Jacksonville to Panama City, only because I couldn't convince Bugatti to let me be the first to drive its exotic powerhouse, the world's fastest car at that time, all the way across America. One gleaming example had arrived in time for the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, where the journos massed for their quick test drives out the front drive of the Ritz Carlton, down a short stretch of the A1A, and back to the Ritz. Not far enough for me. I wanted to take the Veyron in all of its 16-cylinder, 1,001-horsepower, $1.3-million-dollar glory on a coast-to-coast extravaganza of a road trip. Never hurts to ask. I asked. Once the Bugatti guys stopped hyperventilating, I explained that the coastal adventure would be contained wholly within the state of Florida, from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico. My secret destination, however, was to be Vernon, Florida, home of the great Errol Morris' classic documentary about a town in the Panhandle with the highest per-capita population of citizens who'd blown off or whacked off a limb for insurance money. (Google "Nub City.") The Swiss head of Bugatti public relations thought it hilarious. He showed up in a van with a couple of German mechanics to follow us and a failed French Formula 1 driver to serve as my chaperone. I came with a photographer from Germany and one of the most infamous of bad-boy auto magazine tech editors, the irrepressible Don Sherman. Sherman had his own reason for going, and it had nothing to do with a Veyron to Vernon. Once we gave up looking for nubbies, he ordered me to veer south to the handgrip of the Panhandle, familiarly known as the Redneck Riviera. The Don was aiming to secretly execute the Veyron's first Launch Control blastoff in captivity.

Chrysler axes old V6s, goes all-Pentastar

Old technology has a way of lingering on, particularly at Chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills. So while the Pentastar V6 has replaced the older engine architecture in just about every application, it still soldiered on in some export markets. But the introduction of a new 3.0-liter Pentastar V6, produced in Michigan and meant only for the Chinese market, has put the final nail in the old engine's coffin.
Fitted into the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Jeep Wrangler just introduced to China at the Chengdu Motor Show, the downsized six uses the same architecture as the larger 3.6-liter Pentastar V6. But because of its 2,997cc capacity, it can be exported to China without the increased duty the 3.6-liter or even 3.2-liter Pentastar engines would incur. The 3.0-liter V6 develops 230 horsepower at 6,350 rpm and 210 pound-feet at 4,400 rpm.
Admittedly, it's unlikely, but even though the engine was said to be created solely to undercut tax thresholds in China and Europe, the 3.0-liter Pentastar has recently surfaced in rumors of an application here: as the boosted heart of a potential Cherokee SRT with anywhere from 375 to 410 hp.