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Auto blog

Only in Japan: Dodge van one-make racing series is a thing

Japan seems willing to embrace a level of automotive insanity that many other places lack. Whether it's 1,200-horsepower Nissan GT-Rs blasting through tight, tree-lined mountain roads or advertisements with dances for the Toyota Prius Plug-in, the country definitely has a unique way of expressing a love for autos. The D-Van Grand Prix might be one of our favorite examples yet of crazy Japanese car culture, because the annual, one-make race at the Ebisu Circuit is exclusively for heavily customized Dodge vans. Like many great things, this wonderfully crazy idea came from a little rule breaking. D-Van Grand Prix organizer Takuro Abe was at a track event for a motorcycle racing school, and vans were used to haul the bikes around. During lunch someone came up with the idea for a race. Ignoring that the big machines weren't actually allowed on the circuit, the drivers headed out. The popularity has just grown since then. These days, the racing vans absolutely aren't the stock machines from the event's inspiration. In addition to stripped interiors and track rubber that you might expect, the list of mods for them is a mile long. For every possible advantage, the racers fit them with things like Brembo brakes, cross-drilled rotors, heavy-duty transmissions, and much more. Seeing vans lumbering around the track is very weird at first, but the racers take the competition very seriously. These folks even employ all sorts of little tricks to coax the most from the machines. This is a fascinating motorsports story, but be sure to turn on the subtitles to understand the interviews with the competitors.

Chrysler flooded with over 8,000 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel orders in 3 days

The diesel, half-ton pickup has long been a Holy Grail to many truck fans, largely because of its potential to achieve both high payload and great fuel economy. Strange, then, that auto companies have seemingly been slow to react. However, Chrysler is finally wading into the pool for the 2014 model year with a version of its Ram 1500 pickup, and early claimed returns are showing the advantage of being first on the market. The Auburn Hills automaker has just revealed that its initial allocation of 8,000 EcoDiesel trucks has been filled by dealers in just three days.
That flood of orders came from February 7-10, and that strong surge of interest apparently amounts to a new Ram record for the number of customer orders placed for a vehicle in such a short period of time. In fact, EcoDiesel models accounted for over half of Ram 1500 orders over that period, despite the fact that the diesel option costs several thousand dollars more than a comparable gasoline-engined model. That impressive total did not come entirely as a shock to Ram officials, however: "We knew customers have been asking for it," Nick Cappa, Ram Truck communications officer, tells Autoblog.
The 2014 Ram 1500 with its 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V6 and standard eight-speed TorqueFlight automatic makes 240 horsepower and 420 pound-feet - a combination good for 9,200 pounds of towing. Despite that pulling power, its fuel economy is rated at 28 miles per gallon highway (the best among trucks in its class), 20 mpg city and 23 mpg combined. Four-wheel drive variants gives up a single mpg in all categories.

Ram adds 875,000 pickups to tailgate recall now totaling 2.4 million

DETROIT — Fiat Chrysler is adding more than 875,000 Ram pickup trucks worldwide to a series of recalls to fix tailgates that can open while the trucks are being driven. The expansion covers certain Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups from the 2013 through 2018 model years that have power locking tailgates. Affected 2015 through 2017 trucks have 8-foot beds, and the affected 2013, 2014 and 2018 trucks have beds of other sizes and were built before April 1, 2018. Fiat Chrysler says it's not aware of any injuries or accidents caused by the problem. The company recalled about 1.1 million trucks in the U.S. in 2018 for the same problem, and added 410,000 in May of 2019, for a total of more than 2.4 million. Most of the recalled trucks are in the U.S. and Canada. A tailgate tab can fracture and cause the tailgates to unlatch, increasing the risk of cargo spilling onto the road. Dealers will repair the tailgate latch. Owners of the latest batch of recalled trucks will get letters starting around Oct. 18 notifying them to take their trucks to a dealer for service. Fiat Chrysler says the recall expansions came because of reviews of customer data as it monitors vehicles in the field. The company says that all loose cargo in the bed should be secured before driving.