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Vile Gossip | Adventures in tire testing

Jean Jennings has been writing about cars for more than 30 years, after stints as a taxicab driver and as a mechanic in the Chrysler Proving Grounds Impact Lab. She was a staff writer at Car and Driver magazine, the first executive editor and former president and editor-in-chief of Automobile Magazine , the founder of the blog Jean Knows Cars and former automotive correspondent for Good Morning America . She has lifetime awards from both the Motor Press Guild and the New England Motor Press Association. This is her first column for Autoblog — look for more Vile Gossip in the future. I began writing at Car and Driver magazine back in its golden age in the 1970s, before I'd actually read it. I knew very little about cars. The only magazine I read religiously was Four Wheeler because I owned big trucks and liked to go off-roading with my Chrysler Proving Grounds friends. My vast 10 years of driving experience up to that point (high-speed dirt-road idiot, taxicab driver, Chrysler Proving Grounds test driver) had less bearing on my being hired at Car and Driver than the fact that the editor just wanted to rile up the all-male staff. He didn't need me for that. They were already in full dudgeon when I arrived. They'd just spent a chunk of time testing a stack of tires for their big tire-test issue, and the editor-in-chief was toe-to-toe with the technical editor over the rankings of the top 10 tires. It was loud, and it was angry. I had no idea that car magazines tested tires. Cab driving had led me to believe that airing up a tire and changing a flat was all you needed to know. I changed so many flats on that cab, I eventually wound up in front of a live audience on the " Oprah Winfrey Show" demonstrating my brilliance with a jack and a tire iron. My point, of course, is that tires are more controversial, and also more essential, than you'd think. My other point is that it's good to get worked up about the subject, but not quite so good to let yourself be seen, as I did, on my hands and knees with my ass up in the air on national TV. This is how I prefer to test a tire: First, pick a top brand. Then accept their invitation to try and beat the crap out of their tire. I chose Yokohama, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The big news for them was the GEOLANDER M/T G003!

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?

The 2019 Jeep Grand Wagoneer looks like a Grand Cherokee on steroids

It's a special day for Jeep fans. Thanks to the same dealer meeting leak that gave us a look at the 2018 Jeep Wrangler JL, here is our first glimpse of the new Grand Wagoneer. When it arrives for 2019, this three-row crossover SUV will be the top model in Jeep's range. We knew the Grand Wagoneer would be expensive – Jeep CEO Mike Manley said not to rule out prices upwards of $130,000 for this Range Rover fighter – but now we know it looks like it wants to pick an actual fight with its competitors. What's visible of the front and rear styling is very reminiscent of the current Grand Cherokee, but it's muscled up a bit and gets a set of sinister seven-element headlights. The seven-light theme is carried to the rear as well, and we have a feeling the number is a not-so-subtle reference to the seven-slot grille that all Jeeps wear. That said, here the grille is a short, wide-mouth affair that is a bit of a departure from those of other models. And there's a lot of brightwork in these renderings, not just on the grille but for similar pieces that connect the exhaust tips in the rear and tow-hook surrounds up front. Either by design or engineering, the Grand Wagoneer also looks wider than the two-row Grand Cherokee. The Grand Wagoneer will be about the size of the Dodge Durango three-row crossover and will be based on the platform used by the next-generation Grand Cherokee. The GC and Durango currently share a platform based on one used by Mercedes for its large SUVs, and it is not yet known whether the new Jeeps will use an evolution of that platform or something new. Hemi V8 and diesel and gas V6 engines are the likely powertrain options, and we wouldn't be surprised to see a Hellcat-powered version of this mean-looking luxury SUV at some point. Or at least we can hope. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2019 Jeep Grand Wagoneer Dealer Leak Spy Shots Image Credit: KGP Photography Design/Style Spy Photos Jeep Crossover SUV