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Dodge Durango to stay classy with Ron Burgundy as spokesperson [w/video]

The upcoming 2014 Dodge Durango has a lot of things going for it, including its 290-horsepower V6 and 360-hp Hemi V8 engine options, an eight-speed automatic and aggressive looks. And now it will have Ron Burgundy, the fictional television news anchor played by comedian Will Ferrell, as a spokesperson, Adweek reports. He follows in the footsteps of other non-fictional Chrysler brand spokespeople such as Eminem, Clint Eastwood and the late Paul Harvey.
Though the star of 2004's Anchorman and the upcoming Anchorman 2 is wildly popular, we're not sure we see a Dodge spokesperson in Burgundy. (Please, no womanizing or scotchy, scotch, scotch before test test drives). But at this point there's no turning back: Chrysler's chief marketing officer Olivier Francois previewed three ad spots at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Masters of Marketing conference in Phoenix on Friday, and says Chrysler has already filmed 68(!) Durango ads with the fictional newsman.
According to Adweek, one of the ads previewed had Burgundy highlighting the SUV's glovebox size, and in another he compared its horsepower to a white horse standing next to him. Will this help Dodge Durango sales improve? We can only wait and see. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts in Comments, and check out the trailer for Anchorman 2 below.

How Dodge dealers are earning the right to sell Hellcats

We all hate the idea of the dreaded dealer markup when it comes to buying a highly anticipated new car. Take the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, for example. You might spend hours reading about its supercharged V8 and speccing the model just right in the configurator, but when it finally comes down to laying down the cash, the dealer adds thousands of dollars as a "market adjustment" on the muscle machine of your dreams. As it turns out, when the Hellcat starts hitting showrooms in the third quarter, Dodge is trying to make sure that's not the case.
Dealer orders for the much-hyped Hellcat recently started, but Dodge boss Tim Kuniskis has put some special caveats in place to ensure that the Hellcat makes it to the road quickly. The initial allocation is based on the number of Dodge products that a showroom has sold in the last 180 days, and a second allotment in December is based on the last 90 days of sales and 30-day turnover. "You sell a lot of Darts for me, Journeys for me, Durangos for me, I'm going to give you the rights to this one, too, because this is a halo of the brand," said Kuniskis to Automotive News.
Furthermore, how quickly the Hellcat sells is also going to decide whether showrooms get more of them. "If you want to market-adjust the car, that's your right. But if your days-on-lot goes above what the other guys that are selling them at MSRP is, they will end up earning the allocation because their days-on-lot will be lower," he said to Automotive News. Obviously, this doesn't prevent dealers from marking up the Challenger SRT, but the strategy certainly discourages it.

Chrysler almost smothered the Hellcat before it lived

Chrysler's 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V8 was an absolute sensation from the very moment it was announced, and honestly, how could it not have been? Packing 707 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque, its numbers immediately put every other production muscle car (and many supercars) to shame. Plus, we soon learned that would be wrapped in a package retailing for around $60,000 - a pittance compared to other vehicles offering similar grunt. However, the Hellcat almost never got the chance to rumble under the hood of the Challenger and Charger.
The Hellcat was initially proposed back in 2011, back when Fiat was deciding its future strategy for Chrysler Group, according to Automotive News. At the time, the company was just emerging from its bankruptcy doldrums, and an ultra-high-performance V8 wasn't exactly a must-have item. The program didn't move forward. However, SRT engineers kept fighting, according to AN, and four months later, they received the green light to pull the project off the shelf and continue developing the Hellcat. The muscle car world is certainly better for that decision.
The work of those engineers focused on taking Chrysler's standard 6.2-liter V8 and making it reliably handle all of the extra power from the supercharger. "It came down to micron levels of changes in the crank to be able to withstand the pressures of the engine," said Chris Cowland, director of advanced and SRT powertrain, to Automotive News. The changes amounted to switching out about 91 percent of the parts to make the Hellcat, including some quite minuscule alterations. For example, the washer holding the supercharger pulley is embedded with industrial diamonds to keep it from slipping.