(And my last look, unless someone drives one through my house and parks it in the living room!!!! )
You’d think the heat Chrysler took for making the Charger a 4 door…they would have come up with something better looking than a Dodge Neon look-a-like!!!! (I’m a previous Dart owner w/318!!)
But wait… the engines….oh I’m sure there something special there:
I hope you can view this article. Has some great cars – although the saying “keep the shiny side up” doesn’t really translate – these just don’t have one.
I’d love to spend time wandering around Cuba, just to look at the cars.
Mopar, Chrysler Group’s custom parts branch, has announced that a modified 2012 Chrysler 200 and an altered 2012 Dodge Charger have joined its lineup. The 2012 Chrysler 200 Super S and Dodge Charger Redline are dressed in the latest Mopar accessories, giving each an “in-your-face” look. While the Charger already possessed bold exterior attributes even before Mopar’s help, the Chrysler 200 gets a little more self-confidence courtesy of two different packages that can be added on.
“The Super S is Mopar’s interpretation of the Chrysler 200,” said Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO of Mopar, Chrysler Group LLC’s service, parts and customer-care brand. “The extensive list of high-quality Mopar parts enhances the performance and appearance of our Chrysler 200.”
Two packages are available to dress up the 2012 Chrysler 200. The first is called Stage One, which is primarily an appearance package which refines overall styling on Chrysler’s smaller sedan. The Stage Two goes under the hood adding a cold-air intake and a cat-back exhaust system. A cold-air intake is added to boost engine efficiency and performance while a cat-back system gives that extra engine note that may be missing while rolling at lower speeds. Coil-over suspension is also added to enhance the overall ride feel.
The 2012 Dodge Charger Redline receives a few more options than the Chrysler 200 Super S. Mopar’s variant of the Charger is based off of the R/T model and can be dressed in three different packages. Stage One adds exterior styling cues such as a Mopar carbon fiber chin spoiler, “crosshair” grille, carbon fiber door scoops designed to enhance aerodynamics, and the interior also gets a few new accents. Stage Two is adds Mopar bolt-on parts to boost power, handling, and braking. These features include a cat-back exhaust system, cross-braces under the hood to enhance handling, and brake linings to bring the Charger’s Hemi V-8 to a halt quickly. Stage Three adds a 426 HemiV-8 engine which holds the reigns to 590 ponies, 220 more than what’s found in the regular Charger R/T. Known as the “elephant motor” this lightweight aluminum V-8 shaves off more than 100 pounds from its cast-iron siblings. Cast-aluminum valve covers and billet fuel rails are also included in Stage Three of the Charger’s performance kit.
“Since the 1960s, the Mopar Brand has built a long history of adding power and performance to the Dodge Charger—and with the Redline, we Moparized the new Charger with modern-day performance and style while giving a nod to our storied past,” said Gorlier. “With three kits, Mopar offers a tailored choice for every customer.”
Both vehicles are set to debut at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit next week. Which vehicle are you most excited to see? Tell us which one you picked in the comment section below.
For all you MOPAR fans out there this is a great article by Auto Enthusiast. I’m not going to repeat it all here. Grab the link at the bottom of this post.
Mopar is a commonly used word in today’s motorsports and high-performance car scenes, but the origins of the term Mopar had absolutely nothing to do with high horsepower or checkered flags.
Chrysler was a young and growing company in the 1920s. It had bought out the Dodge car company in 1928 and the need for a dedicated parts supplier led to the formation of the Chrysler Motor Parts Division.
As the company continued to grow, Motor Parts Division featured a simple logo with the letters C, D, D and P (Chrysler, Dodge, De Soto and Plymouth) from the years 1933 to 1937.
Nelson L. Farley, a sales promotion manager, decided there had to be a better way of promoting the replacement parts. An “Activities Council” was created. Company records show the results of the Activities Council came to light in the spring of 1937. The group came up with “MoPar,” (a simple contraction of the words MOtor and PARts). The first order of business was coming up with a logo to put the name on cans of antifreeze.
The first MoPar logo was oval and used yellow and red. The new logo and the new name were a big move forward in communicating to the customers. If you needed something for a Chrysler product and got it from the garage that sells the vehicles, it came marked as a MoPar item.
The original brand and trademark logo remained the same from 1937 to 1947. It was slightly changed in 1948. The second logo did not change for six years. MoPar parts were still factory replacement items, nothing more and nothing less.
There is a bit more to the story of the Cricket. Chrysler thought that since GM had purchased Holden and Adam Opel, they should do a ‘me too’ and buy the Rootes group. This consisted of Talbot, Hillman, Simca, and Sunbeam.
The reality is Chrysler was left with a Dog of a car company. They thought the Cricket might catch on due to its image as a gas miser, but it really wasn’t too great on MPG. The build quality was awful, and customers found that the other MOPAR ‘captive import’, the Dodge Colt built by Mitsubishi, was a terrific car with great MPG, and priced a bit cheaper.
One great thing did evolve from the Rootes group for Chrysler; the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon. These were billed as America’s first FWD 4 cylinder car that could compete with imports. Basically, it was a Talbot Horizon that had been on the market in the UK for many years. Chrysler did do dome re-engineering for the US market by adding a FWD version of the bullet proof Torque Flite auto trans (A413), and used VW Rabbit 1.7l 4 cylinder engines rather than the ‘shake and bake’ Peugeot motor in the UK version. Omni and Horizons were a hit, and reasonably reliable (my first new car was a 1982 Horizon TC3 that was reliable to 120K miles and then fell apart).
Lee Iacocca ended up giving the Rootes group away to Peugeot in the late 1970s in exchange for some stock and 4 cylinder engines for the Europe marketed MOPARs.
I’ll stop here so I do not go onto the era of the great K CARs HA HA.
We are going to start of with a well-meant attempt by Chrysler to meet the oil crises from 1973 to 1980. Introducing the Cricket!!!!
1973 Cricket
This car was actually a US spec’ed Hillman Avenger.
It featured the Avenger’s 1.6 liter pushrod engine. This car’s top speed was 84 mph and took a merely 19.8 seconds to get to 60 mph (I bet you were thinking 100 mph!!).
The car was horrible slow and because it was detuned for as part of the US requirements it ran poorly.
10/12/1950 Kaiser-Frazer Built their 500, oooth car.
There ya go...the 500, 000 th
On 10/13/ in 1902 Packard Motor Car Co. was formed from the Ohio Automobile Co. Of interest: In September, 1900, the Ohio Automobile Company was founded as the manufacturer, while the cars were always sold as Packards. Since these automobiles quickly gained an excellent reputation, and there were more automobile makers that produced — or at least planned to — under the label “Ohio”, the name was changed soon: On October 13, 1902, it became the Packard Motor Car Company.
1902 Packard Model F
An Ohio
The very next day 63 years later Oldsmobile debuts the Toronado (10/14/1965).
1965 Toronado I want one of these
On 10/15/1945 Oldsmobile began creating producing per war cars.
And 1924 on the 15th of October, one of my hero’s was born. The proud Poppa of the Mustang and savior of Chrysler Lee Iococca was born in Allentown, PA.
It is 1922 and the car industry is moving right along. Small start-up car companies pop up here and there in the 1920’s.
Here is how they stacked up for 1922.
Top spot was Ford producing 1,147,028 cars.
Dodge was a very distant second with 152,653 car rolling off their assembly line.
Chevrolet ran in third place with 138,932 cars made.
And finish up the list were Buick with 123,152; Studebaker with 105,005; Williys-Overland with 95,410; Durant with 55,300 and finally Maxwell/Chalmers 44,811.
Total passenger cars produced were 2,274,185 with 269,991 truck being made.
Rickenbacker was a new upstart beginning production in 1922.
Durant produce a car priced at $319 . Ford reduced prices to $298.
Balloon tires were introduced.
Hey fuel gauges began being installed in dash in 1922.
1922 Durant Star - An attempt to undercut Ford's prices
I was just reading about the 2015 Mustang (yeah..they are planning it now) in the Oct 2011 Motor Trend.
It’s going to look great with a lower angled windshield and it will be lighter, but it will begin to lose it’s muscle car images, at least
underneath.
From the Motor Trend web site. 2-15 Mustang
The live axle will be gone, replaced with an independent rear suspension. Not really what you want to take to the track. There was talk that the live axle might live on in factory drag packs, but the tooling would be expensive and perhaps not cost-effective. We’ll see what actually happens.
Ford Live Axel
Independent Suspension.
But this is not focus of this blog entry. What I really want to mention was a side bar in the article. It is entitled “Icons on An Icon” “What should the next Mustang be?” Those interviewed were Jack Tenack who was a designer for Ford and global design vice president ( He actually drew the first proposal for the 1965 Mustang); Chris Theodore who was chief of Ford Motor Company’s North American product development (he left after a disagreement over the
suspension for the 2005 Mustang with Phil Martens); Tom Gale who had nothing to do with Ford at all, he was Chrysler design chief (now retired).
Generally Mr. Tenack stayed true to form, basically wanting small changes to the next issue of the Mustang, reinforcing the muscle car
image. He thinks all-wheel drive should be added as an option…that’s not horrible.
Mr.Theodore wants the new Mustang to have a 4 cyclinder…WHAT??? Yeah, get this, he’s like the V8 engines reserved for ‘specialty models”…can you say …hiss…boo??? “Hey, the 70’s called they want their paradigm back!!” Of course he led the charge to replace the live axle.
Mr. Gale thinks that we need to copy Europe and thinks the Mustang needs to be smaller. He says the Camaro is more similar to is predecessor then the Mustang is to its predecessor.
Drop me your thoughts. No V8? Live axle? Smaller ‘Stang?
January 4th, 2012 
aunik_aronno
