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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

Dodge Challenger Hellcat driver arrested hellbound at 160 mph

When fisherman catch big fish, they want the world to know about it. That's approximately how the Indiana State Police felt when they busted a 707-horsepower muscle car booking it at more than 160 miles per hour. The ISP were chuffed enough about the catch that they put out a press release titled, "160 Mile Per Hour Hellcat Tamed On The Indiana Toll Road." The Dodge Challenger Hellcat driver, J. Jesus Duran Sandoval, told the arresting officer that he was "just trying to get to Maryland." The incident began just after Trooper Dustin Eggert finished helping a stranded motorist on the toll road at about 7 p.m. Eggert was merging back into traffic when he saw the Hellcat blast past at well beyond the 70-mph speed limit, allegedly weaving through traffic and — shock! — not using a turn signal for lane changes. With a Bandit on his hands, Eggert took the role of Smokey, and just like Burt Reynolds movies, couldn't catch the offender. Seems that Indiana State Police Dodge Charger Pursuit vehicles are speed limited to 150 mph, allowing the Hellcat to pull away. Eggert radioed for officers ahead to look out for the red baron, but received an assist before other LEOs swooped in: Eggert caught up to the Hellcat 11 miles down the road when the red coupe got held up behind two semis driving next to one another on the two-lane toll road. Sandoval pulled over, admitted he was doing a little more than 160 mph, then delivered The "Maryland" Defense unfazed by the fact that Maryland was more than 500 miles from his location. Turns out that 38-year-old Sandoval, from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, was also unbothered by driving on an expired license. The coppers took Sandoval to the LaPorte County Jail and booked him on reckless driving, bond set at $505, court date set for April 2. The ISP said this is the second time in two weeks they've busted someone doing more than 130 on the Indiana Toll Road. It's the second time in a year they've busted a Hellcat doing so — in April 2017, another pilot played Bat out of Hellcat at 158 mph, explaining his speed as a bit of show-and-tell for his friends in the car. View 142 Photos Related Video:

All-wheel-drive Dodge Challenger GT confirmed by EPA website

The US Environmental Protection Agency accidentally confirmed the upcoming Dodge Challenger GT by posting fuel economy figures for the all-wheel-drive variant of the muscle car. According to FuelEconomy.gov, the Challenger GT, which will come with the 3.6-liter V6 when it's released, is rated to get 18 miles per gallon in the city and 27 miles per gallon on the highway, giving the vehicle a combined rating of 21 miles per gallon. Those figures are slightly lower than the rear-wheel-drive Challenger with the same engine, which gets 19 miles per gallon in the city and 30 miles per gallon on the highway. While previous reports indicated that Dodge is planning to release the all-wheel-drive Challenger GT sometime in 2017, the automaker hasn't confirmed the vehicle. (Mopar's all-wheel-drive concept from last year's SEMA Show is pictured above.) With the EPA putting out the car's official fuel economy figures, the all-wheel-drive muscle car is definitely coming, and should be here before the entire Challenger lineup gets its expected redesign in 2018. And yes, we're still hopeful that the so-called Challenger ADR we saw in spy photos means we'll see all wheel drive and Hellcat power. Because Hellcat everything. Related Video: