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The Cadillac Celestiq concept has been unveiled as a dramatically styled hatchback sedan with futuristic lines and features, yet full of nods to the brand’s history.An all-wheel-drive electric powertrain will be standard; it uses General Motors’ Ultium battery technology.The production Celestiq will be built—by hand—in limited quantities at GM’s Warren, Michigan, Technical Center, and buyers will be able to customize the car any way they like.Cadillac has revealed its most ambitious project in modern times, the Celestiq concept sedan. The concept previews a production model that will serve as the brand’s halo model in its EV era. Cadillac has pinned high hopes on the Celestiq, which was designed from the outset to live up to the brand’s now obscure Standard of the World slogan from way last century.
But the Celestiq is not a mass-market sedan in the vein of the now discontinued CT6. Nor is it a merely a generously equipped EV meant to challenge the Lucid Air or the Mercedes-Benz EQS—although it is that, too. Cadillac is taking a page from the Rolls-Royce playbook and will employ a small team of craftspeople to hand-build each Celestiq onsite at GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.This isn’t going to be the first hand-built Cadillac, but the Celestiq will be the first production vehicle built on the company’s engineering and design campus since the property was built in 1956. GM says it’s investing $81 million to retrofit a low-volume assembly line for the Celestiq inside an existing building on the campus grounds. The production version of the Celestiq is expected to debut as a 2025 model. It is a pleasant surprise that, according to Cadillac, the concept you see here is essentially production intent.Modern Design with Vintage RootsCadillac’s designers and engineers chose to mold the Celestiq into a four-door sedan rather than an SUV, a deliberate decision that underscores the car’s retro-future motif. Throughout the design you’ll find a number of clues to Cadillac’s past, including an image of the brand’s Flying Goddess hood ornament from the 1940s carved into frosted glass trim on the car’s front quarter-panels.

The Celestiq’s long hood, sloping roof, and hatchback-style rear end give it a sleek silhouette, and although it shares some design themes with the Lyriq SUV—namely the grille and hockey-stick-shaped taillamps—it manages to look completely original. The two Cadillac EVs were penned by the same designer, Magalie Debellis, who told Car and Driver that the first version of the Celestiq’s design was striking enough to cause GM leadership to fall in love with the car. Perhaps it was the emotional connection that helped get the Celestiq greenlit as Cadillac’s next flagship sedan, but it took a team effort to pull it off.”It helps the entire company and engineering to work collaboratively with design to really make the car become a true story,” Debellis said.
That collaboration is expected to pay off in more ways than one, according to chief engineer Tony Roma. Building to the Celestiq’s unique design required some innovative engineering, which he said will trickle down through the Cadillac lineup moving forward.

The Celestiq’s luggage compartment, for example, is open to the rear seats without a bulkhead; this created the issue of how to reduce road noise from entering the passenger compartment, which Roma’s team had to solve to keep the designers’ vision intact. Luckily, the electric powertrain—which utilizes GM’s Ultium battery technology—eliminates the traditional burble of a gasoline engine, allowing engineers to focus on dampening other noises instead. High-Tech Meets High-EndThe Celestiq’s cabin is the place where digital and analog mingle the most. A 55-inch curved display stretches across the car’s dashboard from A-pillar to A-pillar, but it’s accented by interior details seemingly pulled directly from 1960s and 1970s Cadillac sedans, including high-pile carpeted floor mats, a large-diameter steering wheel with metal accents, and the show car’s signature bright-red leather upholstery.
The four-seat interior is spacious and quite grand, to say the least. Each of the seats is modeled after the famed Eames chairs of the 1950s, with decorative bent-wood backings that wrap around to the sides to create a streamlined appearance. Sprouting from the bent-wood panels on each of the front seats is a large entertainment display for the rear passengers. A full-length center console runs the entirety of the Celestiq’s cabin, and a smaller display mounted between the two rear passengers provides similar access to the car’s infotainment and navigation systems that is afforded to front-seat occupants. The aforementioned trunk is lined with matching red leather and features metal inlays embedded in the floor to keep cargo from marring the upholstery.The Celestiq’s glass roof panel can be set to opaque or transparent, which isn’t a unique feature in and of itself, but the fact that it’s arranged in a four-place grid that allows each passenger to control their own corner of the panel is novel.
Materials have been painstakingly chosen here for maximum impact. Laetitia Lopez, lead color and trim designer for the Celestiq, explained that the bold red color was chosen for the show car’s interior for the theatrical effect that it creates when you open the door. Hand-brushed metal trim and wood panels along each of the doors have been perforated to allow LED backlighting to shine through. Those are just a few of the details that showcase the level of craftsmanship that Cadillac is putting into its new flagship.Lopez revealed too that while sustainable materials have been incorporated into the design, the team was careful to keep things genuine where it mattered.”The goal was not to have anything that our clients will be unused to in any way, so you know if it’s leather, it has to be real leather. If it’s metal, it has to be real metal,” said Lopez.
The leather is, however, tanned using 40 percent less water than traditional methods, and the black sections of the upper seats have been dyed using fair-trade coffee-bean shells rather than chemicals. The car’s carpeting is made from eucalyptus fibers, and Cadillac says the interior’s wood trim is also ecologically sourced.Concours Quality and Extravagantly PricedTargeting Bentley and Rolls-Royce models means the Celestiq’s price will be out of reach of much of Cadillac’s current customer base. Base MSRP has yet to be announced, but we expect to see it start in the high-$200,000 to low-$300,000 range. Customers will be able to customize their Celestiq to a large degree, similar to what Rolls offers with its Bespoke program and Bentley with its Mulliner division.”I feel like it’s more like a piece of art, something you will want to collect,” said Lopez. “So it’s not something you would use everyday.” Even so, Cadillac says it’s bringing plenty of features to the Celestiq that might make it an attractive daily driver, including GM’s next-generation hands-free driving system called Ultra Cruise. Road-tripping will certainly be in the Celestiq’s wheelhouse too, as we expect it to offer a large battery pack with at least 300 miles of driving range. The electric powertrain is likely to offer brisk acceleration, although we’re expecting the Celestiq’s road manners to be more like a DeVille than a Blackwing.
Such a car is a bit of a risk for Cadillac since it will potentially cost twice as much as the brand’s current priciest entrant, the $151,490 Escalade V. “That’s something that Cadillac as a brand has been missing for a long, long time, that ultimate aspirational moon shot that other brands have got,” said Roma.We couldn’t agree more. Cadillac has been struggling to be taken seriously by luxury buyers for many years, losing out to European luxury players such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Perhaps, then, the Celestiq’s success will be measured not by how many orders are taken but by the interest it draws to other models in the lineup.
Cadillac hasn’t announced how many it will build, but production will be purposely kept at low volumes to ensure exclusivity. So don’t expect to see unsold Celestiqs lining dealer lots. “These are all 100 percent custom ordered,” said Roma. “You’re going to work with someone, design your car, and we’ll build it and deliver it.” Customers will be able to outfit their Celestiq any way they’d like, which the Cadillac team hopes will help foster a personal connection with both the car and the brand.”We’re not rushing an EV luxury car into production,” said Roma. “This has been a painful process of iteration and design, and that’s going to be something that I think any American would be proud to say that it’s an American Cadillac. That’s our goal.”
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The U.S. Postal Service has announced that 50 percent of its upcoming Next Generation Delivery Vehicle postal vans, approved earlier this year, will be battery-electric powered. The USPS had said earlier this year that a much smaller number of the new delivery trucks—10 and later 20 percent—would be EVs.The U.S. Postal Service expects the NGDVs to join the fleet in late 2023. The 1987-era trucks used by the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail will be replaced soon, and a lot more of them will be electric vehicles, the agency announced this week. The USPS had said in February that it would buy up to 165,000 New Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) trucks, which were custom-designed for postal use by Oshkosh Defense after a drawn-out bidding process to replace the USPS’s aging fleet. At that time, the plan was that only about 10 percent of the new vehicles would be EVs. That announcement brought criticism—along with lawsuits from 16 states and environmental groups—because of the terrible fuel economy (less than 9 mpg) these new trucks were expected to achieve. Now the USPS has changed its plan and says that at least 50 percent of its new purpose-built trucks will be EVs.

Sam Mintz via Twitter

The Postal Service gave lack of money as a reason for originally declining to invest in electric trucks. Fiscal responsibility is also the reason given for limiting the initial number of NGDV trucks it will buy to 50,000. Meanwhile, the USPS plans to purchase 34,500 additional “off-the-shelf” commercial vehicles over a two-year period. These will include “as many BEVs as are commercially available and satisfy operational needs,” according to a statement today. Using this formula, in the end the new postal fleet is expected to consist of about 40 percent EVs.The public comment period has been extended until August 15 to allow people to respond to the latest plan, and a virtual hearing on August 8 is open to the public.
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A new look at the upcoming Chevrolet Equinox EV, taken from a thumbnail image spotted on the website, shows it from a new angle in bright blue.The electric SUV is claimed to start at around $30,000 and will be available in fall 2023 as a 2024 model.The Equinox EV’s higher-end sibling, the Blazer EV, was fully revealed on Monday, and this new sighting could indicate that the Equinox EV won’t be far behind.Chevy’s electric vehicle lineup has something old in the forthcoming Silverado EV, which bears a nameplate first introduced in 1975. It has something new in the designed-from-scratch Bolt EV and EUV. As of Monday, it has something borrowed, with the newly unveiled Blazer EV becoming the first electric vehicle to bear Chevy’s Super Sport badge. And now, evidently, it has something blue.

Chevy’s upcoming EVs
Chevrolet

The Equinox EV has been spotted under Upcoming Vehicles on Chevy’s website dressed in, fittingly, electric blue. First revealed in January, Chevy’s midlevel electric SUV offering is set to hit dealer lots in fall 2023 at a price starting around $30,000, but it doesn’t yet have an official release date. However, the addition of the Equinox EV to the Chevy website could be a clue that that day is soon to come.The website thumbnail, which Car and Driver was able to find in a higher-definition version, shows the Equinox EV in a hitherto unseen pose—a side view—with an electric blue body and a white roof. It’s the same color combination first seen in a teaser video Chevy posted in March, which highlighted the Equinox EV’s sporty, forward-thinking yet subdued looks.
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This won’t be the first EV Chevy has offered in an eye-catching cobalt. The Bolt EV and EUV are both available with a Bright Blue Metallic paint job that, in fact, looks very similar to the color shown here. However, the bright two-tone exterior pictured on the Equinox EV could foreshadow a variety of spunky color options, and it hints at what niche Chevy is looking for the SUV to fill as it expands its electric offerings ahead of 2035, when GM intends to go all-electric.

At around $30,000, the Equinox EV will be priced similarly to the Bolts, but it shares a platform with the more expensive Blazer EV, as well as the Cadillac Lyriq and the soon-to-be-released Cadillac Celestiq. This means the Equinox EV is more likely to have all-wheel drive as an option, which the Bolts lack, and have a little extra power than the Bolts’ 200 horsepower.

Equinox EV Interior
Chevrolet

All this combined with the stylish, fun exterior shown on Chevy’s website suggests the Equinox EV will be a sporty, entry-level compact electric SUV akin to . . . well, not akin to many things. The Hyundai Kona Electric doesn’t have all-wheel drive, and other competitors are pushing $40,000 or more. So while the Equinox EV doesn’t have a release date yet, it may be worth the wait once it comes, which could be sooner rather than later.
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• The Ferrari 308 remains a 1980s icon, but few have the performance to match the looks.• In the case of this car, currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer until July 26, a full in-period race-car conversion is backed up with a recent restoration and a tasteful Martini livery.• Ownership history includes one of Germany’s leading Ferrari specialists.Mention the words “Ferrari” and “Hawaii” in close succession, and a mental image forms quickly. A red 308, a Hawaiian shirt, and That Moustache. But in this case, the car is no Magnum P.I. prop. It’s far cooler. Currently located in Haiku on the island of Maui in Hawaii, this very special 308 is up for auction at Bring a Trailer, a part of Hearst Autos, as is Car and Driver. Bidding ends on Tuesday, July 26, and the expectation is that the car will fetch the kind of money that would just about get you a modern 296GTB.

Bring a Trailer

In 1985, the 308 was ending a decade-long run as Ferrari’s V-8–powered sports car. It was a car found on countless bedroom posters, its languid curves calling back to the gorgeous Ferraris of the 1960s. Further, the 308 had provided the basis for the 288GTO, considered the first Ferrari supercar.

Bring a Trailer

Enthusiasts can of course begin here to arm-wrestle over the pecking order between the 288GTO, the F40, and the F50. But in terms of more ordinary Ferraris, the 308 is the one that many a dreamer longed for, years before a driver’s license was a possibility. The only problem is that the juice isn’t really worth the squeeze; 308s are relatively expensive to maintain compared to a later 328, and with horsepower generally hovering around 250 horsepower, the looks aren’t backed up by the performance.

A Ferrari 308 is not a Porsche 911—it’s not likely that an owner is going to want to drive any great distances. So, if you’re going to spring for a Sunday-morning espresso, why not make it a doppio with a race car converted back to road specification? This 1985 308 was reportedly converted to a racing machine in the late 1980s, which included fiberglass panels for lightweighting, and the removal of all unnecessary comforts. The experience offered is just seat, gated shifter, and a Ferrari V-8.

Bring a Trailer

But things get better. Originally delivered in Belgium, this 308 eventually passed into the hands of Uwe Meissner, a German Ferrari specialist. It was Meissner’s personal car, and why that is important should become clear with a short explanation.Meissner founded Modena Motorsport in 1983, and this car still carries a windshield banner from the company. Specializing in vintage Ferraris, he soon moved into working on the F1 cars themselves. Long before Ferrari established its Clienti program, Meissner was making it possible for well-heeled drivers to experience the cars driven by Jacky Ickx, Nigel Mansell, and Michael Schumacher.

Bring a Trailer

Meissner drove most F1 single-seaters in the 1990-to-2000 range himself and is said to have liked the 1991 Mansell car the best of them all. However, when his very rich clients were amusing themselves on the circuit, he wanted something interesting to drive himself. This is it.The engine is a 3.2-liter V-8, rebuilt to rev to 9000 rpm. Power is a staggering 411 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque, backed up by a dyno test. The gearbox is a five-speed manual transaxle modified to handle the extra power. Brakes are AP Racing, and the 15-inch bronze-finish wheels wear Pirellis (naturally) of staggered widths, 225 mm up front and 285 mm in back.This car will probably go for a lot of money, but just imagine it: the satisfying click-clack of the exposed shifter gate as you go from second to third. The shove in the back and the sound in your ears as the eight individual throttle bodies gulp air and the rpm rises. The horizon beckoning under the hot Hawaiian sun, the Pacific dark blue and flecked with surf. Magnum never had it so good.

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After teasing it ad nauseam, Honda has finally revealed the 2023 Honda Civic Type R. Well, mostly revealed it, anyway. We still don’t know how much horsepower it has or what was done to its chassis, other than that bits have been “enhanced.” What we do know is that the latest version of Honda’s hottest hatchback is said to be more powerful than it has ever been. It also looks more mature, which was an easy bar to clear because its predecessor looked like something out of the Japanese anime series Gundam Wing.
R-acy and R-estrained AppearanceIt’s no secret that the outgoing Civic Type R had love-it-or-hate-it styling. For better or worse, the new CTR doesn’t elicit such strong reactions. However, we think it looks wonderful, with only a handful of racy add-ons that don’t ruin the otherwise restrained design. Sure, there are still some fake vents for vanity’s sake, but the ones behind the front wheels are now real. The rear spoiler remains a prominent feature, but it’s no longer a boy-racer caricature.
Like the outgoing version, the new Civic Type R has some unique bodywork. It’s still only offered as a hatchback—per tradition—and has flared fenders that distinguish it from lesser Civics. Honda also gives it wider rear doors that you won’t find on the regular hatch. The side sills are another unique touch, and in the back is a black diffuser with the Type R’s trademark triple-tip, center-exit exhaust.R-eturn of the SidewallEasily overlooked, but hugely important, is the R-rated Civic’s new wheel-and-tire combination. The last one rode on 20-inch rims with 245/30 summer rubber that had pancake-thin sidewalls. Mercifully, a smaller set of lightweight 19-inch rollers with thicker sidewalls is now standard. Don’t worry, though; Honda only downsizes the wheel diameter. The CTR’s contact patch is now notably wider thanks to its new 265/30 Michelin Pilot Sport 4S summer tires.Normally, the big news with an all-new Civic Type R would be its performance specs. Unfortunately, those are being kept under lock and key until Honda reveals them closer to the car’s launch this fall. Luckily, we have some hard facts about what’s under the hood to hold us over. Its to-be-determined power comes from a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder. Once again, the engine’s partner in lap times is a six-speed manual transmission with a rev-match feature.Honda says it’ll be the “most powerful Type R ever.” The U.S. version previously had 306 horsepower; those in the Europe and Japan markets had 316 horses. Is it safe to say the 2023 Civic Type R will have at least 317? The way Honda phrased it makes us think that could be the case, but corporate marketing is a fickle friend, so we’ll just have to wait and see. That also goes for its suspension and steering. They’re somehow improved. That’s all we know for now.R-ed Carpet TreatmentInside, the car’s Type R–specific front seats come in any color you want as long as it’s bright red. We had the chance to sit in these new buckets and can report that they’re super comfortable. The U.S.-spec model will also have red carpeting for the first time, a treatment that was previously only seen in other markets. As of right now, we’re not sure whether Honda will offer a black carpet or not.
The rest of the hot hatch’s interior is what you’ll find in the regular Civic hatchback’s top trims. That means a 9.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, automatic dual-zone climate control, and a fully digital gauge cluster. In the Type R, the latter displays a unique design in the +R drive model. It includes shift lights, gear position, and a race-car-inspired graphic for the tachometer.Honda hasn’t said how much the 2023 Civic Type R will cost, but it’s expected to exceed the price of the 2021 model, which started at $38,910.
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An anonymous source told Bloomberg on Wednesday that Ford is planning to cut as many as 8000 jobs from its Ford Blue division.Ford Blue produces the company’s ICE vehicles, and Ford is looking to cut $3 billion in operational costs from its gas-powered business to invest more money into EV development. Bloomberg reports that the plan is not yet finalized, and a Ford spokesperson told Car and Driver that the company declines comment. Up to 8000 Ford employees could be hit by job cuts, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg. The move could be part of a plan to cut $3 billion in operational costs from the company’s gasoline-powered business operations in order to boost profit and invest more into Ford’s electric-vehicle endeavors. The cuts will reportedly come in the Ford Blue division, which handles production of Ford’s internal-combustion-engine vehicles, and primarily come from salaried positions. There are approximately 31,000 salaried workers at Ford currently. Ford CEO Jim Farley announced in March a radical restructuring of Ford called the Ford+ plan, creating the Ford Blue division and the Model e division, which handles electric vehicles. As part of the plan, he also boosted spending on EVs to $50 billion, which he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television was “based on our core automotive operations.” Farley also added that “We need [Ford Blue] to be more profitable to fund this.”Previously, in February at a Wolfe Research conference appearance in reference to Ford’s ICE operations, Farley said, “We have too many people, we have too much investment, we have too much complexity, and we don’t have expertise in transitioning our assets.”Big Losses in Early 2022Ford lost $3.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, although much of that was driven by a sharp value decline in its stake in EV startup Rivian. Operating profit, meanwhile, was at $2.3 billion, down from $3.9 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Car and Driver reached out to Ford for comment and received the following response from T.R. Reid, Director of Corporate and Public Policy Communications.”We are not commenting on speculation about our business. As we’ve said lots of times, to deliver our Ford+ transformation and lead an exciting and disruptive new era of electric and connected vehicles, we’re reshaping our work and modernizing our organization across all of the automotive business units and the entire company. We’ve laid out clear targets for our cost structure so that we’re lean and fully competitive with the best in the industry.”This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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TikTok creator Tyler Atkin, known on that platform as @ttptng, has been modifying his 1998 Mazda MX-5 Miata with Wii components.His original video showing how he replaced his steering wheel with the plastic Wii remote steering wheel has eclipsed three million views. As you can probably imagine, despite the laughs, he doesn’t recommend the driving experience.Ever hear someone refer to the Miata as a go-kart? What about a Mario Kart? This guy has. As Motor Trend first reported, TikTok user Tyler Atkin decided to replace the steering wheel on his 1998 Miata with the small white-plastic steering wheel provided for the Nintendo Wii.
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The initial video shows Atkin removing his Nardi Torino steering wheel, drilling holes through the Wii controller, and mounting it in the car. Viewer comments quickly poured in for Atkin, requesting new and fun additional modifications. Requests included replacing the shift knob with a Nintendo Wii nunchuck controller (Atkin obliged). He continued by changing his e-brake handle to that of a Wii baseball bat. Most recently, Atkin took the stereo out of the “Wiiata,” as he named it, and replaced it with an actual Nintendo Wii console. Following the install, he added a screen to the dash and booted up Mario Kart to get some races in.
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In an interview with IGN, Atkin clarified where his inspiration for the video came from. “I just like to mess about with stuff; keeps me busy and I thought I’d record it,” said Atkin. After adding the wheel, Atkin gave in to pressure from his fans and has now taken the car out for multiple drives with the plastic wheel and other Wii-based modifications. The experience is something he described in a TikTok as a “horrendous experience.”We probably wouldn’t recommend driving with a car on public roads with an 8.3-inch steering wheel, but we have to give credit where credit is due, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching the videos.
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This story originally appeared in the February 1989 issue of Car and Driver. To hear Bruce Benedict tell it, invent­ing the first modern ragtop pickup truck was not a stroke of genius but rather a reasoned response to an obvious marketing need. Benedict, product-planning chief for the Dodge Dakota pickup line, says that his people were simply “looking for a niche product that no one else had, to help bring buyers into the showrooms to see the rest of the Dakotas.”Everyone knows that there are a lot of convertible pickups running around in California,” Benedict goes on, explain­ing the inspiration matter-of-factly, “but they’re all one-of-a-kinds built by chop shops. After bringing the convertible passenger car back with our K-body, we thought it would be nice to bring out the first pickup convertible.”Benedict and his posse of Dodge Boys may act as if creating the Dakota convertible was a short day’s labor, but deep down they’ve got to be excited about their new baby. The Dakota convertible is going to thaw hearts otherwise ice-cold to these motorized pack horses. We know. It happened to us.

Dodge

On the surface, a pickup truck with a flop top makes about as much sense as a steel baseball mitt. Pickups are designed for hard work, after all. But everyone knows that most pickups actually live a life of leisure. So if people are buying pickups for the fun of owning a car alter­native, why not go full-frivolous and build a sun-worshiping, let’s-go-to-the­-beach party animal? Why not indeed. If a Dodge Dakota convertible sounds like your kind of wheels we have good news: we’ve driven a prototype, and it works. Out on the road, with the top down, the Dakota ragtop is a four­-wheeled attention grabber. As for the mechanical bits, they work about as well as they do in any Dakota steel-top­—which is to say, the Dakota convertible still drives like a truck. But its ability to let the great outdoors in just about negates its pickup-truck drawbacks.

Dodge

The Dakota convertible will go on sale sometime this spring—the exact date hasn’t been set yet—and there probably won’t be enough to go around. “There’s never been a vehicle like it before,” says Benedict, “so no one really knows how many we can sell.” The production schedule has some elasticity in it, but Dodge’s initial guesstimate calls for a mere 2000 examples to be produced. To keep things simple, all Dakota ragtops will be equipped with the Dakota line’s Sport package. The Sport package includes the short-wheelbase (112.0 inch) chassis; a 125-hp, 3.9-liter, 90-de­gree V-6; and a heavy helping of extras. A live-speed manual transmission, alloy wheels, driving lights, a dashful of gauges, a padded roll bar, velour upholstery, power windows and locks, and rear-wheel anti-lock brakes are standard. The few options include a four-speed automatic and air conditioning. After riding the range in a pre-produc­tion four-wheel-drive Dakota convert­ible, we came away most impressed by its solidity. Slicing the top off of most of to­day’s unit-body cars renders them as wispy as an oak leaf, but the Dakota is built on a separate frame. Sawing off the roof doesn’t weaken it appreciably, so it hardly shivers more than a standard Dakota when the tires thump the bumps.

Dodge

In most respects the convertible also drives like a standard-issue Dakota. Over railroad tracks or rough blacktop you feel like you’re perched atop a galloping horse. The V-6 wheezes and strains, and it can’t deliver enough thrust to keep you from yawning. The four-speed automatic acts as if it were trying to make up for the somnolent engine by slamming each shift home. What will keep you wide awake is the wind noise. At 75 mph, even with the top up, the roar drowns out everything else. Watch the veins in your passenger’s neck bulge as he attempts to shout above the gale. Watch him quit trying to talk. Watch him resort to hand signals. Oops, there we go getting serious, judging the Dakota convertible as if it were a real car. No way. It wasn’t intend­ed to make anyone’s list of top-flight In­terstate yachts. The Dakota convertible is a Main Street trawler. Flip down the manual top—it folds almost effortlessly—dial up some tunes, and watch the world watch you.Oh, and don’t forget the sun block.

Specifications

Specifications
Dodge Dakota ConvertibleVehicle Type: front-engine, rear/4-wheel-drive, 3-passenger, 2-door convertible pickup truck
PRICE
As Tested: $17,500 (estimated)
ENGINE
V-6, iron block and heads, Chrysler electronic engine-control system with 1×2-bbl throttle-body fuel injectionDisplacement: 238 in3, 3903 cm3Power (SAE net): 125 hp @ 4000 rpm
TRANSMISSION
4-speed automatic with lockup torque converter
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 112.0 inLength: 192.2 inWidth: 72.3 inHeight: 67.1 inCurb Weight: 3950 lb
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City: 14 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED

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