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2014 Dodge Durango Ron Burgundy ads already have 2.7M views [w/videos]

The guy who once made the Dodge Stratus a punchline of sorts is now a spokesman for the 2014 Dodge Durango, and the move appears to be paying off handsomely for Dodge. Will Ferrell, acting as 1970s-era TV news personality Ron Burgundy, has teamed up with the automaker for co-branded advertisements between the refreshed 2014 Durango and Ferrell's new movie, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Like Ferrell's fictional character, the ads are outrageous, flamboyant and a bit random. They're also successful: Automotive News says that more than 2.7 million people have already watched the videos since they debuted on October 5.
Those views are similar to the numbers that AN's top viral video of the year (e.g. Volkswagen's "Get Happy" Super Bowl ad) received, but there will eventually be as many as 70 videos comprising the Burgundy-Durango spots. According to the report, the videos were created primarily as a viral campaign online, although some are airing on television, too. For Dodge's part, the cost of the videos was significantly lower than a usual television campaign thanks to the fact that Ferrell wasn't paid for the spots since they were made in cooperation with promotional efforts for his new movie.
We've already posted a few of the videos in our previous post, but scroll down for several more - and head over to Adweek for a little added background on how these spots came to be.

Dodge bringing revamped Challenger, Charger to Big Apple

The 2014 New York Auto Show will be a big one for Dodge, as the brand has announced that refreshed versions of the 2015 Challenger and 2015 Charger will debut at the show. This is a particularly big deal for the two-door Challenger which, visually, has remained unchanged since is burst back onto the scene in 2008 and helped reignite the muscle car wars.
As a sort of hint, this announcement was accompanied by the picture you see above - the Super Bee logo in the Challenger's new instrument cluster. According to Dodge, the New York debut of a new "powertrain combination" - possibly with the high-output Hellcat V8 - will leave enthusiasts "abuzz."
As for the Charger, Dodge is promising a full redesign that should be a significant departure from the blunt, angry looks of the current model. At this point, there's no indication that the Challenger's new powertrain could be fitted to the Charger, although considering how mechanically similar these two vehicles have been, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.

Ram to go on a Rampage with new small pickup?

When people look back at today's automotive industry, what do you think they'll remember us for? The emergence of hybrids? Ever more expensive and exotic supercars? The dawn of the self-driving car? All likely scenarios, but so is the blurring of lines between one bodystyle and another, giving rise to hardtop convertible coupes and crossovers of every shape and size. But one bodystyle the North American auto industry has stayed largely away from in the past couple of decades is a car nose and chassis with a pickup bed.
It's a bodystyle immortalized by the Chevrolet El Camino, but with few exceptions, we haven't seen too many of these automotive platypuses in recent years on our turf. Subaru tried with the Baja and the low-volume Honda Ridgeline soldiers along largely unchanged, but the genre's biggest adherents are still Down Under, where ute versions of the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon live. With a few other examples scattered to the four corners of the earth, that's really about it. But if these spy shots are anything to go by, it looks like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles could be working to bring it back.
Spied undergoing testing in Michigan, what we appear to be looking at is a heavily disguised Fiat Strada being prepared - like the Fiat Ducato-based Ram ProMaster and the smaller Doblo-based ProMaster City - for Stateside duty as a Ram product. The Strada, for those unfamiliar, is a product of Fiat Automóveis in Brazil and is based on the Palio economy car. The nameplate has been around South America since 1996 and was originally designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (long before Volkswagen monopolized his talents), and takes a more rugged approach in the form of the Strada Adventure.