2012 Dodge Durango Citadel on 2040-cars

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2025 SRT Hellcat concepts as previewed by high schoolers

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has some very talented designers in its ranks. Like any good company, though, the automaker is always on the lookout for early talent. Even if they're still in high school. One of those talent-seeking initiatives is the company's Drive for Design contest, an event open to tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade students that are hoping for a future in design. For this year's event, students from across the country were given a shot to design their vision for a 2025 model-year Dodge SRT Hellcat. The results are impressive, as you can see in the gallery above. First place went to Ben Treinen, from Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati. Second place was the only award to go to a student outside the Rust Belt, with Macon, GA's Harrison Kunselman, a student at Mount de Sales Academy taking the silver. Third place was won by a metro Detroiter – Bloomfield Hills High School student Hwanseong Jang, while fourth went to Andrew Gombac of Loyola Academy in Wilmette, IL. According to FCA, all four winners will have their sketches on display at the 2016 Autorama at Cobo Center at the end of February. They'll also win some pretty nifty prizes. First place will get a new Apple MacBook Pro, while second, third, and fourth get the new Apple iPad Pro and Apple Pencil (arguably just as good of a prize for budding designers). All four finishers will also attend a three-week automotive design course at Detroit's prestigious College for Creative Studies, have dinner with FCA designers, and score three passes to Autorama. FCA will cover travel and lodging to Auburn Hills. Read on for the official blast from FCA. Related Video: FCA US Design Team Announces Winners of Drive for Design Contest January 19, 2016 , Auburn Hills, Mich. - The FCA US LLC Design team today announced four winners in this year's Drive for Design contest. The FCA US Drive for Design contest challenged U.S. high school students in grades 10-12 to design a Dodge SRT Hellcat for the year 2025. "The Drive for Design contest continues to be a great way for the FCA US Design team to connect with students that show an interest in art and design," said Mark Trostle – Head of Dodge and SRT Design, FCA US LLC.

Auto Mergers and Acquisitions: Suicide or salvation?

We love the Moses figure. A savior riding in from stage right with the ideas, the smarts, and the scrappiness to put things right. Alan Mullaly. Carroll Shelby. Lee Iacocca. Andrew Carnegie. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Bart Simpson. Sergio Marchionne does not likely view himself with Moses-like optics, but the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently gave a remarkable, perhaps prophetic interview with Automotive News about his interest and the inevitability of merging with a potential automotive partner like General Motors. Marchionne has been overtly public about his notion that GM must merge with FCA. For a bit of context, GM sold 9.9 million vehicles in 2014, posting $2.8 billion in net income, while FCA sold 4.75 million units and earned $2.4 billion in net income, painting a very rosy FCA earnings-to-sales picture. But that's not the entire picture. Most people in the auto industry still remember the trainwreck that was the DaimlerChrysler "merger" written in what turned out to be sand in 1998. It proved to be a master class in how not to fuse two companies, two cultures, two continents, and two management teams. Oh, it worked for the two individuals at both helms pre-merger. They got silly rich. And the industry itself was in a misty romance at the time with mergers and acquisitions. BMW bought Rolls-Royce. Volkswagen Group bought Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini, putting all three brands into their rightful place in both products and positioning. No marriages there, so no false pretense. Finally, Nissan and Renault got married in 1999. A successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust. But a successful marriage requires several rare elements in this atmosphere of gas fumes and power lust, the principle part being honesty. Daimler and Chrysler lied to each other. The heads of each unit, the product planners, and finance all presented their then-current and long-range forecasts to each other with less-than-forthright accuracy. Daimler was the far greater equal and no one from the Chrysler side enjoyed that. The cultures were entirely different, too, and little was done to bridge that gap. Which brings me back to the present overtures by Marchionne to GM. "There are varying degrees of hugs," Marchionne stated in the Automotive News piece. "I can hug you nicely, I can hug you tightly, I can hug you like a bear, I can really hug you." Seriously?

Mopar maneuvers into SEMA with a multitude of modified models

As the aftermarket and performance arm of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Mopar has a duty to extract everything from the company's models that it can, and there's no better place to show all of its work off than the annual SEMA Show.
Dodge really gets in on the act this year with several customs to show off different parts of the brand's performance heritage. Perhaps the most interesting among them is the track-prepped Viper ACR Concept (pictured above). It wears a custom body kit to produce even more downforce, thanks in no small part to a monstrous wing at the back. To shed weight, most of the interior is stripped out, as well. Next up, the Challenger T/A Concept takes inspiration from '70s Trans-Am racing in a livery of Sublime Green and matte black paint. The center scoop in the hood keeps the 6.4-liter V8 fed with cool air, and the special's 20-by-9.5-inch matte black wheels keep it planted in the corners.
Also getting the once-over from Mopar is the Charger R/T. It wears the division's body kit, and under the hood, a cold-air intake keeps the 5.7-liter V8 breathing. The suspension is retooled to hold the road better with a coil-over kit, upgraded sway bars and strut tower braces for the front and rear. The company is also showing off a snazzy blue Charger with a mean look. The final Dodge getting work from Mopar is the Dart R/T Concept with bright, O-So-Orange paint and a matte black hood with a scoop hooked directly to the air intake. The performance-oriented design is finished off with a coil-over suspension and big brake kit, as well.