Chrysler (Page 15)

August 2012 was a good month for the Chrysler Group with an improvement of 14% marking the 29th consecutive month of year over year gains thanks to all five of the Group brands posting positive gains – helping the smallest of the Detroit automakers to post its best August since 2007 while leading the Big 3 in sales growth.

The Chrysler Group has just posted the newest television advertisement for the 2013 Dodge Dart, titled “How to Make the Most Hi-Tech Car”, which will debut on the small screen tonight during the NFL season opener on NBC – marking the beginning of a new wave of advertising for the sporty new compact spanning broadcast and print.

The Chevrolet Camaro did what it has not been able to do since April of this year, posting higher sales than the Ford Mustang and the Dodge Challenger in a month where the Mustang has been as close as it has been all year in passing the Camaro for the top spot in muscle car sales.

General Motors and the Chrysler Group have both banned visits at any of their facilities by either of the Presidential hopefuls until after the election on November 6th in an effort to keep their company name from being involved in either of the campaign trails.

Chrysler announced today the official specifications for the new Pentastar V6 found in the 2013 Ram 1500 and even though the new 3.6L V6 makes the Ram 1500 the most powerful ‘entry level’ truck in America – it is also the most fuel efficient half ton truck on the market today.

This past weekend at the 2012 Woodward Dream Cruise, the massive Chrysler Group display at 13 Miles Road and Woodward Ave had an area with the customized Mopar vehicles sporting their model year alongside the 2012 Jeep Wrangler Apache by Mopar which shares the black and blue paint scheme – leaving some to wonder if this could be a hint as to the future of the Mopar vehicle lineup.

After a week of festivities in the metro Detroit area, the 2012 Woodward Dream Cruise has come to a close and once again – the Chrysler Group and Ford Motor Company displays were among the bigger and best along the multi-mile cruise route.

Today at the Concorso Italiano in Monterey California, the Fiat brand introduced the 2013 Fiat 500 Turbo – a performance model designed to bridge the gap between the standard Fiat 500 and the high performance Fiat 500 Abarth – with 34mpg and a price under $20k.

The Chrysler Group announced today that they will introduce the new 2013 SRT Viper GTS Launch Edition at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in Monterey California – fitted with the same blue and white paint scheme that has adorned the launch models of the previous generation Viper coupes.

The Chrysler Group’s high performance Street and Racing Technology (SRT) brand continues to make sure that their presence is known in the motorsports world as the American LeMans Series has announced that the Grand Prix of Baltimore will be presented by SRT and the ALMS stop in Baltimore in September will be named the Baltimore Sports Car Challenger Presented by SRT.

After more than 11 years of production in Ohio, the life of the Jeep Liberty as we currently know it ends today at the Toledo North Assembly Plant.

The Chrysler Group has announced that they are recalling select 2013 Dodge Durango sport utility vehicles in the 7-passenger configuration over a concern that the airbag modules could prevent the side impact airbags from working properly in the event of an accident – increasing the likelihood of injuries to rear riding passengers.

The 18th annual Woodward Dream Cruise will have a strong showing from Chrysler this year, showing the largest number of vehicles they've ever had at the event.

After receiving hundreds of complaints about ticking, stalling, power loss and misfire conditions (thus check engine lights) in select vehicles powered by the popular 3.6L Pentastar V6, the Chrysler Group has begun replacing the cylinder heads on some problematic vehicles – with as many as 7,500 vehicle affected in the US.

The hoards of faithful Dodge loving NASCAR fans around the country received some very bad news this week as SRT Motorsports President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Gilles announced that Dodge would be pulling out of the NASCAR Nationwide and NASCAR Sprint Cup Series after the current 2012 racing season.

Saturday afternoon brought about the debut of the 2013 SRT Viper GTS-R race car in the American LeMans Series in Mid Ohio and while their 10th and 12th place finishes are a far cry from the win collected when the original GTS-R debut in the 90s – Team SRT is happy with the performance of their brand new race cars and they will make their next attempt in two weeks at Road America.

Today began Day Two for the new SRT race program featuring the 2013 Viper GTS-R and while Day One brought a disappointing set of slower lap times – today brought about a much more serious problem as the #91 Viper ran into engine problems during the first practice session that kept them out of qualifying.

While the recent success of the Japanese automakers doing business in America have pushed the Chrysler Group out of the top spot in terms of year over year growth, Chrysler was able to continue their strong year as they were the only American automaker to show positive growth in July 2012.

The two new 2013 SRT Viper GTS-R teams completed their first official practice with the American LeMans Series a couple hours ago with both teams turning in mediocre times – putting them both in the lower end of the GT Class field after very short practice sessions.