1966 Fiat Jolly on 2040-cars

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Jay Leno gifts wounded warrior a Fiat 124 Spider Abarth

Comedian and car guy Jay Leno is making the talk show rounds ahead of the debut of the new season of Jay Leno's Garage. After revisiting his old digs at The Tonight Show on Monday, Leno arrived on the set of The Today Show Tuesday morning, and much as he did in 2014, one of America's wounded veterans was the big beneficiary. Stephanie Morris, a US Army specialist was stationed at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan when two rocket-propelled grenades landed inside the base's perimeter, shattering her left femur and fracturing her right foot. What followed was three years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Spc. Morris worked to keep her right leg, undergoing intensive physical therapy and three dozen failed surgeries before ultimately deciding on amputation following her participation in the Warrior Games last June. The amputation was on the Fourth of July. Leno, who's long been a supporter of American troops and an active USO participant, met with Spc. Morris, and took her for a spin in the new Fiat 124 Abarth Spider. And like Leno did in 2014 when he gave Corporal Ethan Laberge a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, Morris's visit with the comedian ended with the Abarth's keys in her hand. Watch the video above. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Hellcat no help to Fiat-Chrysler's bottom-of-the-pile mpg average

What, you expected the "fastest muscle car ever" to help fleetwide fuel economy? Nope, don't think that's going to happen. That means Fiat Chrysler will likely to continue to languish at the bottom of the heap when it comes to fleetwide fuel economy among the largest automakers serving the US, especially as the automaker starts to sell its Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. A few hundred Fiat 500E electric vehicles aren't going to turn the trend around. See, Chrysler has once again finished at the bottom of the list when it came to fleetwide fuel economy among automakers for 2014 model-year vehicles, according to a preliminary study by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Chrysler and Fiat had an average of 21.1 miles per gallon. That substantially lagged the overall 24.2 mpg average, but it was an increase from the company's 20.9 mpg average last year and the 20.1 mpg average two years prior. For 2014, General Motors had the second-worst fleetwide fuel economy at an even 22 mpg. Fiat Chrysler does say it's working on improving its fuel economy, according to Automotive News. The company plans on making its inline-four-cylinder and V6 engines smaller, and will sell more vehicles with eight- and nine-speed transmissions. Heck, there's even a plug-in hybrid version of the Chrysler Town & Country minivan in the works for late 2015, and the company can tout fuel-efficiency gains with the Chrysler 200 and Jeep Cherokee. We would be remiss if we didn't note that, compared to its muscle-car forefathers, the Hellcat actually performs pretty well at the pump. Last month, word got out that the 2015 Challenger Hellcat, equipped either with a six-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic transmission, got a combined fuel economy of 16 mpg. Heck, the automatic-tranny version got 22 mpg on the highway. And that's for a car with 707 horsepower and a 10-second quarter-mile time. Still, with the pedal floored, the car can burn a gallon and a half of fuel per minute. Ouch.

Chrysler purchases remaining shares from VEBA Trust, announces funding plan

It's official: The Detroit Three is now The Detroit Two and The Fiat Subsidiary, Chrysler. Both the Italian carmaker and The Pentastar announced the completion of cash payments and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on future payments necessary to make the Chrysler Group a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fiat. As previously detailed, Chrysler made a cash payment of $1.9 billion and Fiat North America made a cash payment of $1.75 billion to the Voluntary Employment Benefit Association (VEBA) run by the United Auto Workers union.
On top of that, Chrysler Group signed an MOU that agrees to payments of $700 million to the VEBA in four installments, the first of which was made concurrently with the other cash payments. And for you trivia mavens, the full name of the UAW is the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. So go impress your loved ones with that nugget after you check out the press release below.