2005 Chrysler Pt Cruiser Gt Convertible 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Feds fretting over remote hack of Jeep Cherokee

A cyber-security gap that allowed for the remote hacking of a Jeep Cherokee has federal officials concerned. An associate administrator with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that news of the breach conducted by researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller had "floated around the entire federal government." "The Homeland Security folks sent out broadcasts that, 'Here's an issue that needs to be addressed,'" said Nathaniel Beuse, an associate administrator with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Valasek and Miller commandeered remote control of the Cherokee through a security flaw in the cellular connection to the car's Uconnect infotainment system. From his Pittsburgh home, Valasek manipulated critical safety inputs, such as transmission function, on Miller's Jeep as he drove along a highway near St. Louis, MO. The scope of the remote breach is believed to be the first of its kind. The prominent cyber-security researchers needed no prior access to the vehicle to perform the hack, and the scope of the remote breach is believed to be the first of its kind. A NHTSA spokesperson said the agency's cyber-security staff members are "putting their expertise to work assessing this threat and the response, and we will take action if we determine it's necessary to protect safety." A Homeland Security spokesperson referred questions about the hack to Chrysler. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has already been the subject of a federal hearing this month, in which officials scrutinized whether the company had adequately fixed recalled vehicles and repeatedly failed to notify the government about defects. But cyber-security concerns are a new and different species for the regulatory agency. Only hours before the Jeep hack was announced by Wired magazine earlier this week, NHTSA administrator Dr. Mark Rosekind said hacking vulnerabilities were a threat to privacy, safety, and the public's trust with new connected and autonomous technologies that allow vehicles to communicate. NHTSA outlined its response to the cyber-security challenges facing the industry in a report issued Tuesday. In it, the agency summarized its best practices for thwarting attacks and said it will analyze possible real-time infiltration responses. But the agency's ability to handle hackers may only go so far.

Labor Day: A look back at the largest UAW strikes in history

American made is almost an anachronism now, but good manufacturing jobs drove America's post-war economic golden age. Fifty years ago, if you held a job on a line, you were most likely a member of a union. And no union was more powerful than the United Auto Workers. Before the slow decline in membership started in the 1970s, the UAW had over 1.5 million members and represented workers from the insurance industry to aerospace and defense. The UAW isn't the powerhouse it once was. Today, just fewer than 400,000 workers hold membership in the UAW. Unions are sometimes blamed for the decline of American manufacturing, as companies have spent the last 30 years outsourcing their needs to countries with cheap labor and fewer requirements for the health and safety of their workers. Unions formed out of a desire to protect workers from dangerous conditions and abject poverty once their physical abilities were used up on the line; woes that manufacturers now outsource to poorer countries, along with the jobs. Striking was the workers' way of demanding humane treatment and a seat at the table with management. Most strikes are and were local affairs, affecting one or two plants and lasting a few days. But some strikes took thousands of workers off the line for months. Some were large enough to change the landscape of America. 1. 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike In 1936, just a year after the UAW formed and the same year they held their first convention, the union moved to organize workers within a major manufacturer. For extra oomph, they went after the largest in the world – General Motors. UAW Local 174 president Walter Reuther focused on two huge production facilities – one in Flint and one in Cleveland, where GM made all the parts for Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet. Conditions in these plants were hellish. Workers weren't allowed bathroom breaks and often soiled themselves while standing at their stations. Workers were pushed to the limit on 12-14 hour shifts, six days a week. The production speed was nearly impossibly fast and debilitating injuries were common. In July 1936, temperatures inside the Flint plants reached over 100 degrees, yet managers refused to slow the line. Heat exhaustion killed hundreds of workers. Their families could expect no compensation for their deaths. When two brothers were fired in Cleveland when management discovered they were part of the union, a wildcat strike broke out.

Junkyard Gem: 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser Dream Cruiser Series 1

It has become fashionable to hate the PT Cruiser these days, but Chrysler really hit a home run with the idea of a retro-looking, Neon-based vehicle that — legally speaking — qualified as a light truck according to American regulations and thus didn't need to comply with the costly fuel-economy and crash-safety rules applied to cars. PT Cruisers sold like crazy for the first half of the 2000s and even developed something of a cult followingÂ… but familiarity bred contempt once every parking lot and traffic jam in the country filled up with cute-looking retrowagons. I didn't start seeing many of these cars trucks in junkyards until about a decade ago, at which point the Chrysler section of every yard instantly became about 50% PT Cruisers. Most of the time, I ignore them as car-graveyard background noise, but the rare turbocharged Cruisers or those with manual transmissions can catch my eye, as well as those with weird body kits. The more interesting special-edition PT Cruisers also seem worth documenting as historically significant Junkyard Gems, and here's one of the rarest of all: a Dream Cruiser Series 1, found last summer in Colorado. Inspired by Detroit's Woodward Dream Cruise, the '02 Dream Cruiser Series 1 was the first of many special-edition PT Cruisers (if you're going to collect them all, you'll need to find a Pacific Coast Highway Edition, a Sunset Boulevard Edition, a Woodie Edition, and all the subsequent Dream Cruiser Series cars). All the Series 1 Dream Cruisers came in metallic Inca Gold paint, allegedly inspired by the paint on the 1998 Pronto Cruiser concept car. Chrysler planned to build 7,500 of these cars trucks, but I cannot verify actual production numbers. This is the first I've seen in a self-service wrecking yard, at any rate. The Dream Cruiser Series 1 got leather seats and interesting gold-trimmed interior surfaces. This one looks a bit rough inside, but we can assume it was glorious when new. Resale value on the PT Cruiser has cratered in recent years, so even a runner has little chance of evading the cold steel jaws of the crusher, once it starts to rust. Because every performance upgrade you can do with a Neon can also be done to a PT Cruiser, it would be possible to swap all the relevant mechanical bits from an SRT-4 Neon into a snazzy-looking Dream Cruiser and have the quickest PT Cruiser in your timezone. You should do this. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences.