Auto News & New car review

The Dodge Viper ranks among the fiercest, most raw, visceral machines sold in showrooms anywhere. Only a few cars come as close as the Viper to a street-legal race car: Ferrari F430 Scuderia, Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, Porsche 911 GT3RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZO6, Honda S2000CR. Only two of these cost less, and none come within 95 hp of the Viper.

For most automotive tasks the Viper is overkill, like using a six-pound sledgehammer to swat a fly. Ridiculously fast and able to slosh your eyeballs about in their orbit rounding a bend or under heavy braking, it didn’t really need any more power. But with archrival Corvette Z06 at 505 hp, that’s just what Dodge did for 2008. They made the engine just 0.1 liter bigger but added 95 horses to make a nice round 600. The fly would still be dead, but now you have a bigger hammer. Read the rest of this entry »

Unquestionably the biggest star of this year’s Chicago Auto Show was the Dodge Challenger SRT8. The muscle car begins its limited run later this year, but senior editor Joe Wiesenfelder spends some up-close time with the coupe in the first video to the left. Read the rest of this entry »

I drink Espolon tequila. It’s not a matter of taste, smoothness or snobbery. Veteran drinkers– like car buyers– know it’s always better to buy top shelf hooch to minimize the inevitable after-effects. Get drunk on the cheap and you pay the price (the old “I have to get better so I can die” routine). By the same token, buy a Dodge Durango and it will burn all the way down to the pit of your automotive soul, leaving you with a hangover that will last years. Where’s the fun in that? Read the rest of this entry »