2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee Summit 4x2 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Jeep: Portraits

Jeep looks back on 75 years of four-wheeling. The brand's tough vehicles have carried everything from soldiers to sunbathers. The brand wants you to remember all the highlights, from the beaches of Normandy to the fictional Jurassic Park – one a remarkable accomplishment of human determination in the face of war, the other a really successful movie. Do you think Jeep's spot captures the essence of the brand? Vote it up or down. Marketing/Advertising Jeep Super Bowl Commercials 2016 super bowl ad

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Jeep DJ-5L Mail Dispatcher

When it comes to putting mail in boxes, a simple and reliable vehicle works best. Say, a zero-frills steel box on wheels, with right-hand-drive, a fuel-efficient four-cylinder engine, no-hassle automatic transmission, sliding doors, and a big mail-sorting table instead of a passenger seat. That's what the AM General Mail Dispatcher DJ-5 was all about, and these bouncy little trucks were everywhere for decades. Here's a late-production example, still in USPS colors, spotted in a Denver-area self-service wrecking yard. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed this courier from the swift completion of its appointed rounds. Note the "Sonic Eagle" USPS logos on the doors; this became the official USPS logo in 1993, nearly a decade after the final Jeep DJ-5s were built. Plenty of these trucks stayed in service into our current century, and a few are still being used by private mail-delivery contractors in rural areas. During the American Motors era of Jeep DJ production (1970 through 1984), a bewildering assortment of engines went into postal Jeeps. This is a 2.5-liter GM Iron Duke four-cylinder; before that, DJ-5s came with Audi power (more or less the same engine used in the Porsche 924, in fact), AMC straight-sixes, and Chevy Nova four-cylinders. The 1984 DJ-5Ms ran the AMC 2.5-liter four-cylinder. The earliest DJs were equipped with three-speed manual transmissions, but the American Motors-built postal-delivery versions all had automatic transmissions. This one has a three-speed Chrysler Torqueflite A904, a weird engine/transmission combination that should help you stump your friends during car-trivia debates. Check out the ultra-bare-bones heater/ventilation controls! These trucks were badged as AM Generals, not Jeeps (I couldn't find a single Jeep label anywhere on this one), just like the original HMMWV. However, you'd have to be a real hair-splitter to refer to this as an AM General DJ-5 instead of just Mail Jeep or Jeep DJ-5. Next time you complain about your subcompact rental car lacking driver-comfort features, consider this vehicle. I had a few high-school friends who owned DJ-5s, back in the early 1980s when they were available for a couple hundred bucks at government-surplus auctions. The first thing civilian DJ-5 owners always did was tear out the mail-sorting table and replace it with a random junkyard bucket seat (or an aluminum lawn chair). These trucks were very noisy, very bouncy, and very slow, but they always ran.

Stellantis and LG announce Canadian EV battery joint venture

SEOUL — South Korean battery giant LG Energy Solution (LGES) said on Wednesday it plans to invest $1.5 billion to set up a joint venture with Stellantis in Canada. LGES owns 51% of the joint venture, tentatively named "LGES-STLA JV" and Stellantis owns 49%, LGES said in a regulatory filing. In October, LGES and Stellantis NV struck an electric vehicle (EV) battery production joint venture, targeting to start production by the first quarter of 2024 and aiming to have an annual production capacity of 40 gigawatt hours of batteries. In a separate regulatory filing, LGES said it plans to acquire a stake worth $542 million in ES America to respond to demand from EV startups in the United States. LGES is considering building a factory in Arizona to meet demand in the United States, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, adding that the plant is expected to primarily produce cylindrical battery cells. LGES has its own factory in Michigan and two battery joint ventures with General Motors in Ohio and Tennessee. "We are considering a new production site, but nothing has been decided yet," said a spokesperson at LGES. LGES, which counts Tesla, GM and Volkswagen among its customers, currently has battery production sites in the United States, China, Poland, Indonesia and South Korea. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Green Plants/Manufacturing Chrysler Dodge Fiat Jeep RAM Electric