2006 Chrysler Pt Cruiser Base Wagon 4-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Plug-in BMWs, long-term updates and the best of SEMA 2018 | Autoblog Podcast #560

On this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Associate Editor Reese Counts. The pair discuss the BMW 740e xDrive iPerformance plug-in hybrid as well as our long-term Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid and Honda Ridgeline. They also discuss the best of SEMA Show 2018, including some pretty wild cars from Dodge and Chevy. Finally, we spend your money. This week, rather than pulling questions in from our email, we head to Reddit to answer some questions on r/cars.Autoblog Podcast #560 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown 2018 BMW 740e xDrive iPerformance 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid long-term 2018 Honda Ridgeline RTL-E long-term SEMA Spend My Money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video: Green Podcasts BMW Chrysler Dodge Honda chrysler pacifica

Junkyard Gem: 1993 Plymouth Voyager SE AWD

Under Lee Iacocca's leadership, Chrysler printed bales of money by designing a small, front-wheel-drive van based on the versatile K platform. Chrysler didn't invent the minivan, of course, but those first 1984 Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyagers instantly put small vans square in the middle of the American vehicle mainstream (and began the long downward spiral of the station wagon here). For the 1991 model year, the second generation of Chrysler minivans hit our roads, and they were bigger, better-appointed and available with all-wheel-drive. Here's one of those early second-gen vans, found in a Denver-area boneyard a few months back. The 1984 Voyager was a genuine minivan, scaling in at a mere 2,984 pounds (about the same as the current Toyota Corolla). The wheelbases of the second-generation Voyager and Grand Voyager grew just a fraction of an inch longer, but the vans themselves got longer and heavier anyway. The curb weight of today's Junkyard Gem was 4,008 pounds. By 1993, minivans were under sales assault by a new crop of SUVs, particularly the Ford Explorer (which debuted for the 1991 model year) and Chrysler's own Jeep Grand Cherokee (which first appeared as a 1993 model). Chrysler's XJ Cherokee had been siphoning away minivan sales since Day One, having first hit Jeep showrooms at the same time as the first Voyagers and Caravans went on sale. Still, the 1993 Caravan/Grand Caravan, Voyager/Grand Voyager and Town & Country obliterated those trucks when it came to usable interior space, safety, ride comfort and fuel economy. Plymouth used the Voyager name on rebadged Dodge Sportsman full-size vans from the 1974 through 1983 model years, during which time Chrysler attempted to sell their big fuel-swilling passenger vans as sensible station wagons. The Grand Voyager had a wheelbase stretch of just over seven inches versus that of the regular Voyager; the SE was the lower of the two trim levels available for the AWD-equipped version in 1993. In 1993, base-grade front-wheel-drive Voyagers had 2.5-liter Chrysler four-cylinder engines as standard equipment, while front-wheel-drive Grand Voyagers got Mitsubishi 6G72 V6 engines. If you bought a new all-wheel-drive Grand Voyager that year, your van had this Chrysler 3.3-liter pushrod V6, rated at 150 horsepower and 180 pound-feet. Sadly, Chrysler stopped installing turbocharged 2.2 engines in their minivans after 1990.

Stellantis wants to sell its Auburn Hills HQ and lease space in it

Ford Motor Company's global headquarters is the Henry Ford II World Center — or Ford World Headquarters, or Glass House — located in Dearborn, Michigan and completed in 1956. GM's global headquarters is 12 miles away in Detroit, Michigan, a set of seven connected towers completed between 1977 and 1981 and known as the Renaissance Center, or RenCen. Stellantis' global HQ is in a small town in The Netherlands called Hoofddorp. But home base for its U.S. outpost is about 30 miles north of the RenCen at the Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology Center, or CTC, in Auburn Hills, MI. The Detroit News reports that Stellantis might use the CTC like a giant Airbnb, selling the building and leasing back only the space it needs. This isn't a new consideration, Stellantis has been looking at options for the 500-acre campus and 15-story, 5.4-million-square-foot main building since at least early 2022, when the Detroit Free Press wrote about it. At that time, one of Covid's effects was to deepen the discussion about remote work as companies pushed to reopen offices and a fair number of employees made it clear they didn't want to resume their commutes. A company spokesperson told Freep, "As part of our companyÂ’s evolution to a more flexible work environment, called the New Era of Agility, we are currently evaluating how we work to enable our teams to be their most innovative, creative and efficient. That analysis includes potential adjustments to our real estate portfolio." As characterized by Freep based on information from an anonymous source, "The company is considering what the right 'footprint' will be going forward and whether it needs to maintain so much space." Before the Freep piece ran, the automaker had already ceded one leased building near HQ and moved those workers into the main complex. And agility might still be necessary since it's tough to tell where remote work trends are going to go. Fortune just reported that "Fewer than 26% of US households still have someone working remotely at least one day a week, a sharp decline from the early-2021 peak of 37%, according to the two latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys.