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Special Dodge Challengers get Hellcat bits to celebrate Mopar's 80th birthday

This year, Mopar is celebrating its 80th anniversary, and it's doing so in two-tone style with this very limited edition Dodge Challenger. Only 160 of these Challengers will be built, with 80 in each paint scheme. Buyers can choose between either Billet Silver or the slightly painful sounding Contusion Blue, each of which gets a hand-painted Pitch Black top half. These Challengers are based on the existing 392 Shaker package, but come with an array of upgrades and tweaks. In addition to the custom two-tone paint, the shaker scoop and rear spoiler are painted in the same color, rather than the usual matte black. The cars come with 20-inch wheels and hand-painted 392 logos on the fenders. The 392 cu. in., or 6.4-liter if you prefer, engine produces the same 485 horsepower and 475 lb-ft of torque as its normal counterpart. This Mopar Challenger will have more access to cold air, though, since it has both the shaker scoop and the headlamp intake from the Challenger Hellcat. At the back, there's also exhaust tips borrowed from the most hellish of Challengers. Or at least the most hellish, so far. View 14 Photos Inside, the changes are more minor. Performance seats are added with embroidered Mopar logos in the backrests. The seats and other trim also feature a silver-colored Tungsten stitching. Naturally, a serial number badge makes an appearance inside, too. Owners will also receive a little box of goodies including a booklet, signed rendering, keychain, additional badge, and a certificate showing the date of manufacture. The overall package is rather attractive, but it isn't cheap. To own one of the few Mopar Challengers, you'll have to fork over $56,885. That's a significant premium over the 392 Scat Pack Shaker, which starts at just $44,890 and makes just as much power. You'll also be able to get a 392 Scat Pack Shaker right away, while the Mopar special edition won't be out until spring. Plus, you may not get it until summer because the hand-painting process takes some time. Of course, for some people, the cost and the wait are worth the exclusivity. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Buick takes top spot in 2022 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study

People, economies, and supply chains weren't the only things continuing to get sick over the past year. The 2022 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS) is out, showing the average rate of problems per 100 vehicles (PP100) during the first 90 days of ownership increased overall. The average figure for the 32 ranked manufacturers in 2020 was about 166 problems per 100 vehicles. In the 2021 IQS, that dropped to an average of 162. This year, the average jumps to 180 problems. J.D. Power says that figure is a record high over the 36-year history of the study. Buick leapt to the top of the rankings this year with the fewest issues, at 139 problems per 100 vehicles in the first 100 days of ownership. After Dodge became the first American automaker to lead the IQS in 2020, followed by Ram in 2021, this year marks a three-peat for U.S. carmakers. Dodge took second this year at 143 PP100, Chevrolet third with 147 PP100, Genesis the first luxury maker on the chart in fourth with 156 PP100. Between February and May, this year's study gathered responses to 223 questions from more than 84,000 new 2022-model-year car owners and lessees. The questions are designed to zero in on real-world problems new owners encounter with nine categories of vehicle features: Infotainment; features, controls and displays; exterior; driving assistance; interior; powertrain; seats; driving experience; and climate. As has been the case in the past few year, infotainment has proved to be the most problematic bugbear making scores worse. Considering features individually, six of 10 of the worst problem areas dealt with infotainment, causing infotainment's score of 45 PP100 to be 19.5 PP100 worse than the second-placed feature. Consumers ranked getting Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to connect reliably as the most troublesome.  GM didn't just score with Buick, which was one of only nine of the 33 ranked brands to show improvement this year. The conglomerate earned first place with the fewest PP100 among all the automaker groups, and scored the most model-level awards with nine, ahead of BMW with eight and Hyundai Group with three.  This year's study again showed a gap between luxury and mass-market makers, thought to be down to the amount of tech in luxury vehicles that consumers aren't properly informed about or that doesn't act as expected — that latter issue exacerbated by the chip shortage.

Junkyard Gem: 2007 Dodge Caliber SXT with 5-speed manual transmission

When DaimlerChrysler unleashed the Caliber as a Neon replacement for the 2007 model year, the American car-buying world was put on notice that cute transportation appliances would be kicked to the side by the hobnailed boots of a new generation of angry, brutish, truck-influenced transportation appliances. The Caliber sold well enough at first, but eventually blurred into the fleet-car background noise and got shoved aside by the Alfa-derived Dart after 2012. Since I'm always on the lookout for super-rare three-pedal cars while I'm poking around in junkyards, I check out discarded Calibers in the hope of spying such a machine. This work paid off when I spotted this first-model-year '07 in a Northern California yard last month. In fact, the 5-speed manual transmission came as standard equipment on the non-R/T Calibers in 2007, but nearly every Caliber buyer opted to get the continuously variable automatic instead. That odd-looking horizontal shifter rod reminds me of the one in the early-1970s Honda 600. One reason I check out junkyard Calibers is that I'm trying to find a Boston Acoustics "MusicGate" speaker box, an optional rig that went on the inside of the hatch, to use in my next car-parts boombox project. I haven't managed to find one yet, but I'm not giving up. This car is a luxurious SXT, the trim level that squeezed between the bare-bones SE and the high-zoot R/T. When you bought the SXT, you got the pimp-grade Chill Zone™ (a beverage compartment with internal air-conditioner ducts) as standard equipment. Now this rare Caliber sits among the discarded PT Cruisers and Avengers of the yard's Chrysler section, on the flight path of the big C-5s heading into Travis Air Force Base. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Dodge's marketers tried hard to make the Caliber look tough, even murderous, the kind of car that would use an old Polara bumper jack to beat cuddly cartoon characters to death in a spray of flying teeth and blood-spattered fur. If all Calibers had come with manual transmissions, perhaps this macho image would have stuck better than it did. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Silly little fairy!