Auto News 5

Automobile Magazine's annual All-Stars test inevitably features a few predictable outcomes. For instance, I fully expected the Chevy Corvette ZR1 to rip my face off, and indeed I am now faceless. And I wasn't even driving it at the time. I was in the Jaguar XF, following executive editor Joe DeMatio, who floored the throttle and nearly triggered the Jag's air bags with the concussive boom of the ZR1's exhaust.

I *heart* this thing! Yeah, it's huge and heavy, but it sounds great, looks great, and goes like stink. The steering is inexcusably numb and slow. The clutch will break your left knee, and it transmits driveline vibes to the pedal - audibly - through the throw-out-bearing. I've never heard a clutch pedal sing before. The shifter is way too high-effort but is bolt-action precise and fits the personality of the car. Engine management and ESP are tuned so well around the car's numbness that you don't even know when you're sliding. I love the pillowy ride but surprisingly not-awful body control. I hate the nav interface and the turn signal indicators in the corners of the cluster. The brakes feel okay, but started smelling a little before I expected them to. The ratios are so close together that you find yourself shifting constantly; the soundtrack is unreal. If only all transmissions were geared like this. What a fun, fun, hot car. It drives as fun as it looks, and that's pretty damn impressive.

In the total absence of a regular information stream from the once fairly blabby (back when it was a public corporation) Chrysler, we are left to marvel aloud at the latest round of surprise moves from the now-secretive, privately held carmaker. At a hastily assembled news conference, CEO Bob Nardelli gleefully unleashed on the crowd three electric vehicles from the equivalent of nowhere. It might as well have been rabbits from a silk top hat, the jaded press corps was so stunned.

Back in 1986, Chrysler-designer-turned-Dodge-car-marketing-manager Bob Marcks had the idea that a tough "big rig" look could transform Dodge pickup sales. He made a couple of rough sketches, and even though trucks weren't his business, his idea was picked up in the creative ferment of the Bob Lutz/Tom Gale era at the old "New" Chrysler Corporation, resulting in the production vehicle that debuted at the Detroit auto show in 1993. That the aggressive styling really mattered was proven by results: with pretty much the same old underpinnings, sales tripled less than a year after the Ram went on sale. At one point, the Ram pickup was the third best-selling vehicle in America, ahead of all passenger cars and behind only the perpetual leaders, Ford's F-150 and Chevrolet's Silverado.