This episode of the Autoblog Podcast features Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore and Associate Editor Byron Hurd. They kick off with an overview of the 2022 North American Car, Truck and Utility of the Year award winners (spoiler: Ford did well). After that, they talk about GM's electric pickup strategy and whether a premium electric pickup from Cadillac makes sense. Then, they pivot to Mitsubishi and the future of the Ralliart nameplate. Will we ever get a fun, inexpensive enthusiast car from the Japanese automaker again? Then it's on to what Byron's had in the driveway for the past couple weeks, including a 2022 Chevy Corvette and a 2022 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 Xtreme Recon. Plus, he talks about putting some new snow tires on his personal Jeep Wrangler for evaluation in Michigan winter.
Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: Podcast@Autoblog.com.
Transcript[THEME MUSIC]
GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to the Autoblog Podcast. I'm Greg Migliore. Joining me today is associate editor Byron Hurd. What's going on, man.
BYRON HURD: Hey, not a lot. Looking forward to maybe some snowflakes, maybe some pretty weather to go with this freezing cold we've had.
GREG MIGLIORE: Can't wait for it. Can't wait for it. You've got some, you've got a couple of Jeeps actually. That one specifically is still in your driveway, or somewhere at your house that will be good for the snow.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: We'll talk about that a little bit more later. We'll also talk about the 392 Wrangler that you drove. I have never driven a V8 Wrangler, so I'm excited to hear what you think. I've driven almost every kind of Wrangler, the hybrid, the turbo, the diesel, the old V6, the 4 liter, you know, like all those engines over the years. I know you have, too, but I've never driven a V8 Wrangler. So interested to hear what you take, what you think.
You also spent some time in the Corvette, which it's interesting to me to talk about the Corvette because it was just the biggest deal in the world for that time period when it launched and then it's just kind of fallen back. It's like you see them on the road and, not in a bad way, it's just become, it's become endemic if you will, to use a word. Like the new Corvette is here, it's mid-engined, it's been here a couple of years. And we're just talking about it like you had a Hyundai Sonata in your driveway last week or something.
So, it should be fun. We'll run through some news. Car truck of the year winners are out. That's NACTOY as you might know it, car, truck and utility, of course. We'll break those down.
Then we've got some fun news pieces. Mitsubishi unveiled a Ralliart concept, three of them actually. But one was called the Vision Ralliart this month and we're going to try and break down what we think that means. And then Byron you just think that Cadillac should do a truck version of the Escalade, apparently, because why not. And you'd want it to be electric, so that should be fun
BYRON HURD: Yeah, that was an interesting little thing that was actually prompted by, well I'm now a Cadillac owner, and so now I get Cadillac owner surveys. And maybe this is a little bit of insight until they figure out that I'm a journalist and stop sending them to me.
GREG MIGLIORE: We've had some fun with this. We were talking about how this was an episode of The West Wing where what did they, they sent one of those Gallup polls to somebody. They were like, how did they find out? And I think the press Secretary, CJ Cregg if you're a West Wing fan, was like, yeah they call a journalist. And they were like, are you kidding me? What are the odds of that?
BYRON HURD: Of all the luck.
GREG MIGLIORE: Of all the luck. Yeah. And I believe it was when President Bartlet may have been hiding his illness or something? Maybe I'm off on that. Maybe?
BYRON HURD: That sounds about right, yeah. There's always shenanigans on that show.
GREG MIGLIORE: There were some other plot lines. But anyways, so that's a new section. We have an update on spending someone else's money from the last, just from the last episode. So should be fun. So that's the rundown. Stick around. We got a great show. Let's get right into it.
OK, and the winners are in for NACTOY. That's North American Car Truck and Utility of the Year. This is one of the longest-running, oldest prestigious awards. It's essentially the car truck and SUV of the year.
Winners, Honda Civic for car, Maverick for the truck, the Ford Maverick, and the Ford Bronco for utility vehicle of the year. This is the second straight year that Ford has taken two of the three categories. So it's been a glittering year of hardware for the last couple of years for Ford.
Full disclosure here, I am on the jury. It's great fun to vote. It's really an interesting process to get to go to the sort of the group test every year that they have in the fall. This was my first year. I really enjoyed it. But then just quickly to kind of break down some of the winners here. These vehicles, I think, were interesting in many respects.
The Bronco to me, it's just like hey, the Bronco's back. That was very exciting play. It finally gets into a segment where the Wrangler was left alone, essentially, for so many years. You talk about the 4Runner, Defender is back now. But I mean the Bronco is just like, I mean it was the biggest single I think almost enthusiast reveal when it came out. It just really blew up our site. People were so excited about it.
Honda Civic, there's so many different versions of it. Like to me, Honda really paid attention to just the scope and the strength of what the Honda Civic can mean to its customers. They invested in the car. You might remember maybe 10 years ago, right at the start of the economic downturn the Civic went through this kind of series where it was almost like it was very like budget based. And you could tell that in the interior.
This time this is a real legit Civic. It's right up there in the segment. It looks good. I drove several versions of it. You can still get a manual, that's a great thing. So I mean, to me that was like--
There was a lot of things in the field, too, you know, everything from like the S-class to Lucid. Lots of cool things, the Blackwings were in there. I think I know where you would land there, Byron, as far as what you like. But all sorts of different things. And then the Civic gets in there and wins it, which is cool.
Maverick is, I would say, another one of my favorite vehicles that I have driven this year. It just was really-- It's such an interesting truck. You know, they put so much into it. Ford put so much into it to make it a compelling product at a very affordable price. And there will be a hybrid. And it just does so many different things well, from the utility to the way you can customize the utility, to even the interior.
A lot of kind of Easter eggs. They made, I would say, inexpensive materials look good in there. So to me I think a lot of that really resonated and just another double winning year for Ford. So I mean that's car and truck of the year winners. What did you think, Byron? Any surprises when you saw the winners?
BYRON HURD: I was a little surprised by the Civic, honestly. Like I haven't experienced it so my opinion doesn't count for a whole lot. But it just seemed a little, I don't know, obvious I guess is the word I'm looking for. Just like, oh yeah, the Civic is good. But then I looked back at the finalists. I was actually just pulling those up while you were talking about it, and based on what the other options were I mean I get it. It makes sense.
And I, looking at, you know Bronco almost seemed like a gimme pretty much from the beginning. But I feel really the same way about Maverick and I haven't had a chance to drive a Maverick yet. I did get to crawl all over it at that preview event I went to right before the launch.
And so I get what you're saying about the interior execution. And those trucks were very much like pre-production prototypes, you know. The parts on them weren't all necessarily completely on, you know.
But even then in that kind of early build state I was impressed by how they managed to make cheap work. And I think actually for myself a Maverick might be on my short list as the next vehicle, right there with a hypothetical Gladiator 4xe which still hasn't officially been made official. But the only thing holding me back on the Maverick right now is the lack of all wheel drive at the hybrid.
And it's one of those things that just feels so inevitable, like there's just no way that they're going to continue to sell a pickup that isn't offered with four driven wheels. I mean, yeah, you can get it with the turbo, but you know with the hybrid being kind of like the flagship if you will, of that car, like the thing that actually makes it different, leaving that on the table doesn't seem like an option for very long.
GREG MIGLIORE: I think they're going to expand that, the Maverick line, if you will. I think we're going to see some tweaks in the next couple of years. And that's a very interesting segment. You know, I think if you had told me two years ago, hey, the small pickup segment is coming back. Like we all thought Ford was going to do this. They were going to replace the Focus with this sort of entry level vehicle and it's like they're, well, it's going to be a truck.
OK, sure. Good luck with that, right? You guys already have the Ranger. You're going to make a small truck? But I mean it shows you how execution can really make the difference in a product, you know? If you had just a true econobox truck that had no character to it, people would be like, OK cool. They'd get laughed at. But they did a, I think they did an all around good job with the Maverick.
So check out our full coverage. It's on Autoblog.com. Check out, if you want to dig more into the results even, the North American Car Truck and Utility website of the year, has some of that stuff, too. Give that a plug.
And let's shift gears over to an electric Cadillac truck, speaking of trucks. You actually ran a poll. I voted in it, which I thought was a lot of fun, actually. Give me the final tally. I think it was like what, 56% in favor of Yes?
BYRON HURD: Yeah, it ended up being right in that ballpark. We had, let's see, it was about 180 votes? Yeah, 180 votes. 55% in favor of Cadillac building essentially a new EXT but as an electric truck, which isn't, you know, it's an interesting idea.
And you know the survey that actually came to me was asking about just a hypothetical luxury pickup. It was done through Cadillac so the assumption there is that it's either going to be Escalade-based, or it's going to at least kind of capture that same kind of top end of a segment that it doesn't really otherwise play in type thing. And if you look back to the EXT it's kind of a natural progression off of the Silverado EV that we just saw, which borrows a lot of those Avalanche cues, like the buttressed rear box and all that.
So you know it's kind of one of those things where like, oh, OK. Well they are asking us these questions just days after they've shown off this new thing that looks just like the last luxury pickup they sold. It's hard not to put 2 and 2 together. So it's an interesting idea.
People were obviously at least somewhat interested in that. I was a little shocked, frankly, that the results were so positive, that the responses were so positive I should say. I wasn't expecting people to be in favor of bigger and heavier and more electric trucks, even with the Cadillac badge on it. But apparently the people are interested.
GREG MIGLIORE: What, just to back up and give some context to this, maybe you want to explain what piqued your interest in this and why you think, hey, this is worth talking about. It's a very short opinion piece on our site here. Just give some people some context here. It's they, actually Cadillac did a little bit of a survey here. Yeah.
BYRON HURD: Yeah, it was just a basic market research survey that they send out.
GREG MIGLIORE: Copy.
BYRON HURD: It was because I bought the Blackwing so I'm on their customer mailing list for these kinds of things I just got randomly selected. I assume randomly. Either that or they really wanted me to do something like this and see how people responded to the idea.
But either way, yeah it was, I mean it was pitched as a pickup truck with at least 300 miles of range, and what they called, quote like advanced technology, which I take to mean Super Cruise and all that kind of stuff, 10,000 pounds of towing capacity, and five passenger seating. So that sounds to me like a super cab pickup truck based on an Escalade that also happens to be electric. So it's an interesting idea.
It's, you know, it's one of those where they were just like, hey, would you be interested on a scale of 1 to 10. And that was it. That was end of survey. Nothing more than that.
And of course GM right now with the Silverado EV is in a position to then create, you know, they have two pickup opportunities here. You can do another in the Sierra for GMC if you want to, even though they've already got the Hummer pickup. And then you've got this Cadillac opportunity kind of floating out there.
So I mean, they're making huge investments in these new electric platforms, into Ultium, into getting all this stuff to work. And anything that they can use as an excuse to recoup some of the costs seems smart and, while the original Escalade EXT may not have been a hot seller the market's different now. Pickups are everything and it kind of feels to me like this is something that might actually be hinting at a potential future product.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. No, I think-- I mean, if you had asked me to vote, if they had sent me the survey, I would have probably said 7, you know. Sure, do it. I sort of like the idea of an electric Cadillac pickup truck. To me that just makes a lot of sense, whereas if this was going to be like a more conventionally powered, you know, V6, V8, diesel I could probably get on board with.
But you know, that to me is just like another trim level or variant for the Escalade. You make it electric, well now it's kind of cool, you know. And I think that's where, I think there's a lot of electric truck buyers who might say, hey well, wait a minute, Cadillac. OK, hang on here. This could be interesting.
So we'll see. I think the one thing about Cadillac, when they've said this all along, is you can charge more for it. It was just like, the Chevy Volt had to be very aggressive with its sticker price but the Cadillac ELR, if you remember that. Am I getting the numbers right? I think it was ELR.
You know that one they're like, hey, we can actually kind of maybe sort of make money out of this one, because we could just charge more for it. So I mean that's where you can just add 10 grand and boom, there you go. So now Chevy, Hummer, General Motors has a lot of expensive electric trucks. But maybe that's where the market's going. It sure looks like it. So we'll see.
Drop us a note. Podcast at autoblog.com. Let us know what you think. Maybe-- Is your Twitter poll still open there, Byron, or did it close up?
BYRON HURD: No. It ran over the weekend. So that's no longer going, but the conversation that we set up using the comment system on the site is still open. So feel free to hop in there.
GREG MIGLIORE: Sounds good. Yeah. Give us some feedback. We'd love to hear what you think. Let's talk about the Mitsubishi Ralliart. That's a cool name. It's, Mitsubishi used it for years. I think some Lancers and Galants over the years.
You know I remember like when I started getting into this gig, I remember driving a few of those Ralliarts. They were pretty fun. You know, they looked cool, I mean, for the time, for what they were. It was not bad.
You know, they were pretty fairly priced and, you know, you got a little bit of enthusiast cred. You know maybe you're not rolling around in an Evo or something but hey, it shows you've got some sort of enthusiast like taste, if you will.
We saw a couple few new ones at the Tokyo auto salon this month. The one that I think kind of like is the conversation starter is the Vision one, as they call it. And that one is like, there's all sorts of things going on with it. And it's based on an Outlander, which would make the most sense for a future execution.
Looks pretty wild. Obviously, check out the story on our site. We'll see if this means they're going to maybe bring back some sort of a Ralliart name or something for the US. Sometimes with Mitsubishi it doesn't necessarily come to the US first. They try it out in other markets, which makes sense. But you know I thought it looked interesting, it looked solid, you know.
There was an Eclipse Cross, as well. They called them the Ralliart style, and then another Outlander Ralliart style. It's kind of hard to say. But those to me looked more like things you could sell here, versus this kind of concept that was sort of the headliner.
So I mean, this one, I think they should do it. This is a good name. It had a lot of credibility 10, 15 years ago. But yeah I mean, to me I would say, yeah, go for it. What do you think, Byron?
BYRON HURD: Yeah, I'm with you. Honestly, it's got at least as much equity as Hyundai has with N and they're already playing around in sporty crossover space and stuff like that, so there's certainly room for it. And you know, especially if we're not going to do sedans we've got to do something fun. So it might as well be this.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yes.
BYRON HURD: And I actually do have fond memories of the old Ralliarts, too, like even the outgoing one. That dual clutch automatic gearbox that they put in there was actually really, really good for its time. You think, you know, Volkswagen had kind of cornered the market for the cheaper end of that because they were really the only ones doing it.
And then Mitsubishi came along with one that actually didn't suck, which was surprising because the next one we saw was Ford's cheap thing that went in the Focus and Fiesta which was a complete disaster on so many levels. But I think people kind of forget that Mitsubishi had a really good DCT there for a while that not too many people actually got to play with.
GREG MIGLIORE: That, I remember that DCT. It was really something. I remember the version of it in the Evo, and it was just like, you know to quote Lightning McQueen, it was just like K-chow, K-chow, like right through the gears. It was a lot of fun. Those paddles were really something.
I remember driving the Evo back in '08 with all of that, all the Evo-ness, if you will and very cool car. I have, I actually was trying to remember the last time I drove a Ralliart, and I found an old Autoweek driver's notes from 2010, where I drove the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Sport Back.
In my head it was like an Outlander or something but it wasn't, because I don't think that was even a thing back then. But it was this kind of crossover. And you know, it's like the Evo was sort of like my gateway into like all of the things, you know the performance things you could get with Mitsubishi. And I did drive the Evo on a track that year as well, so I was really on this kind of like path of awareness, if you will.
But, yeah. That was a fun car. I remember specifically I had it over like Christmas and-- No, it was Thanksgiving. It was the long holiday car, and it's funny how what, geeze, 13 years later, 12 years later, whatever it is, that stuff like that sticks with you sometimes.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: You know, because it was such a different car at the time, too. But yeah, I mean it stuck with me. And over a decade later I'm saying bring it back, so yeah.
BYRON HURD: I actually had a pretty wild week with a Lance-- Not a Sport Back, just a regular four door Ralliart that drove me home in the middle of a spontaneous commute blizzard. It was on summer tires but the all-wheel drive got it done. And then that weekend I actually took it to an autocross, so I got both the winter all-wheel drive experience and then the performance all-wheel drive experience.
And frankly, with a good set of snow tires on it it would have been far more suited to the winter end of that because that turbo was not great for auto crossing, unfortunately. And the Evo was a much better car and did everything pretty well.
GREG MIGLIORE: What time period, roughly, do you think this was, just guessing?
BYRON HURD: I'm going to say it was probably like November of '09.
GREG MIGLIORE: OK.
BYRON HURD: Somewhere in that ballpark, '08, '09, maybe.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, Mitsubishi must have really been into press cars at that point because that's the same time I drove this thing. I'm laughing out loud here because it looks like Autoweek put it online April 11, 2010. And I'm thinking to myself that's a really long lead time.
I remember driving that car when it was like, very cold out. So I'm thinking maybe it was more like, I don't know. It ran in the magazine first and then the driver's notes ran later, whenever somebody uploaded them online or something. Different time, that's for sure.
But yeah, Evo was a great snow car. That used to happen all the time. We had a long-termer and you'd get stuck in a blizzard, you'd be like yeah, I got the Evo. Cool. I'll be fine, you know.
All right. That's enough of our trips down memory lane, but yeah. Bring back the Ralliart. That'd do a lot for Mitsubishi, even as an electric car that could add some sporting credibility to the EV segment.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. All right, let's talk about what you've been driving. Lead off with the Corvette. I feel like the Corvette is something we haven't really talked about a lot lately. What version did you have? What did you do with it?
BYRON HURD: So I just had a, it was a 2LT. I think the sticker on it was about $84, give or take. And, so pretty loaded up. Not all the way to the top, but pretty loaded up. It was in kind of a greenish gray finish. I don't recall the name of it. It was very nice.
We got to take that one out and play around with it. It was cold and snowy last week, just like it's looking like it's going to be cold and snowy for the rest of this week. So it was not really ideal weather for it and unfortunately it originally was slated to come to us on actual winter tires, but one of the winter tires was damaged so instead they put the all season tires on it. So still a better alternative than the pure dedicated summers that it came with, but not quite full winter. So I a little more cautious with when I took it out and what I did with it.
But finally got a little time with it over the weekend and had a blast. It's, that car is amazing to drive. And it's one of those things where you look at how much performance you can get for that, like say like $75,000 range, where you can get like, you can get into a CT4 V Blackwing. You can get the Corvette. You can get, kind of touch to like, you know, like a low option BMW M3 or an Audi RS.
You know, you can get a lot for that money. And they are all very different, especially if you factor in things like the high output pony cars, like if you're talking a Mustang GT 500 or like a ZL1 Camaro. You know those are costly once you start adding options, and they all approach performance so differently.
But the Corvette is just so beautifully surgical and it's really fun to drive and oddly the character of the engine doesn't even really seem to fit the car so much anymore. Like it still feels like a big, kind of slow V8. And while it doesn't perform like one, the character feels a little strange for such a modern interpretation of like the iconic American sports car.
So I was blown away by the performance. It handles beautifully, their adaptive magnetic suspensions, regardless of what they call them, whether it's MRC, Magnaride, whatever, they're all fantastic. It's great in the Corvette. It actually makes it a car that you can almost like-- It's a daily-drivable car.
You know, it's one of those things where, you look at like the Acura NSX and the Audi R8 and you think of them as like the kind of ultimate daily-drivable supercars. Because you know they're all-wheel drive. They're relatively approachable cost-wise. They're comfortable enough that you're not miserable all the time. The Corvette is almost there. The only thing missing from it is the all-wheel drive.
And you know, even like a pretty long highway stretch up 75, which is not the nicest highway surface in the world, wasn't bad. It wasn't fatiguing after a few hours behind the wheel. It felt really nice. And man does it rip. And it sounds so good doing it. It's beautifully balanced, sounds great, handles great, moves beautifully. And even on the all season tires it hooked up really nicely, even in the cold.
So, very impressed by that car. It's the first time I've really spent any time with it. The last time I literally just drove it around a parking lot. But I'm a convert. I'm on board.
GREG MIGLIORE: So you're going to trade in your CT4 Blackwing and get a Corvette?
BYRON HURD: Absolutely not.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah?
BYRON HURD: The other, the one, the real conclusion that I got from that was I'm glad I spent my money the way I did because the Cadillac does a lot more things than the Corvette can, but just doesn't do the go fast part quite as effectively and, you know, that's the inherent compromise.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah that's-- Honestly that was the kind of-- I mean, I think the Corvette's actually a better value than either of the Blackwings, actually.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: Because it's, I mean it's basically an exotic mid-engined sports car. Not basically, it is. With a ton of horsepower-to-value ratio. There's entry level, move on up the spectrum. You get a lot of card for the modern C8, if you will.
And frankly Corvettes have always been a pretty good value, I think.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: They offer a lot of very attainable performance that frankly can be very challenging to drive. It's a car that if you're an enthusiast the Corvette has always been there for you, you know.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: So, cool. Did you do anything crazy with it? I don't know if it snowed when you had it or this is more just kind of like a winter car.
BYRON HURD: No, it was-- It did snow while I had it but I did not take it out on the days it snowed just for fear of disagreements between all season tires and actual snow cover. But I mean the times we actually did get it out it was still not any warmer than about 30 degrees in any place. We were in the shade out in the twistier roads out west of here.
It was pretty icy and there was a lot of salt down on the road so, you know, it was squirrely. And even I played with it in track mode a little bit on the street just to kind of get a feel for how quickly it would overwhelm the tires to have so much on the road. But it actually composed itself pretty nicely and it really took some pretty hard acceleration and some pretty good lateral forces out of corners to really get it upset.
So it's just an amazing little car to drive. And I mean, you know, realistically with a set of genuine snow tires you know it's the kind of car you could DD year round if you really needed to. I wouldn't want to. I mean, it seems like a terrible thing to do a car like that but you know you could get away with.
Just like you can get away with it in a 911 with the rear-engine advantages, and a Boxster with the mid-engine advantages. You can do it in a Corvette, too.
GREG MIGLIORE: I drove a C7 through a blizzard, actually on multiple occasions. To continue our memoirs here, apparently. When I was at Automobile we had a long-term Corvette. And somehow it's like, the month of January I ended up in it twice, which seems fatalistic almost. But it was better than you would think in a snowstorm, you know.
I mean, granted, I was borderline terrified, to be honest. So better than you think is sort of setting the bar pretty low. But it was all right, you know. The big thing is you're low to the ground, you know. And that's always like, it doesn't matter what you're driving. If you're low to the ground in a snowstorm you're going to get a little nervous.
But hey, I made it. In fact, I didn't even like change my plans that weekend. I went downtown. Did a long commute. So, yeah.
BYRON HURD: Nice.
GREG MIGLIORE: Props to Chevy.
BYRON HURD: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: So you've driven a V8 Wrangler. I never have. I already went through all the different Wranglers that I've driven. Every single engine, never driven a V8. Tell me about it. What did you do with it?
BYRON HURD: So I haven't done a whole lot with it yet. I had played with it a bit. This is for me kind of an opportunity to actually feel it out a little bit on the road because I've already driven, this is my second time. I'm bragging a little bit. Second time driving one of these.
This one is a '22 model, so it has the, it's a 392 with the Extreme Recon package, which was introduced midway through the 2021 model year and continues for 2022. So it's not only a 392 but it's a 392 on 35s. So it is quite a driveway presence, let me tell you.
But so far I've actually only, you just really kind of petered around town with it a little bit. The one thing that really jumps out at you driving one of these in the winter is how loud they are because, especially with that V8 cold start, especially if you're parking it outside or in an unheated garage, that first bark, man, the neighbors are going to hear you a quarter mile away, no matter what setting you have the exhaust in. It's just a lot.
And that, you know, the composite body shell and roof in a four door Wrangler becomes kind of like a big reverb chamber when you have low frequency noises. So you feel that engine as much as you hear it. And it's quite an experience. So it's a very interesting toy and it's definitely the like apex Wrangler, you know. It's the Wrangler you buy to show everybody how much you love Wranglers.
I don't know it's one that I'd want to live with. I think personally I'd rather have a 4xe. But it is quite a presence. And it gets a lot of looks and thumbs up. So you should definitely sample one at your earliest opportunity.
GREG MIGLIORE: Interesting. Yeah, I really like the Wrangler, for starters. But I've always been more of like, like power, and chrome and like, just some of the flashier colors have never been my thing when it comes to the Wrangler. One of my friends bought like a really snazzy looking red one. Looks awesome. I really like it. And like yeah, you know, that's cool.
And they're like, what would you get? Like well, I would probably get like a gray one, or like that khaki one, or the black one. Or even the green one I think looks good, you know. And so you know I'm more of just like give me the like the Pentastar V6. That's fine. It's kind of an old, dated powertrain at this point if you're going to spend the money that a Wrangler currently commands, with chips, inflation and all that good stuff.
But I kind of like my Wranglers simple, you know. To me they're like outdoorsy vehicles, not hot rods. And I kind of like understated the better. But yeah, it's interesting. Maybe I could try it out and my mind will change. So we'll see. But in the Recon edition, obviously. I mean, geeze. Yeah. That's even layering it on even more. Two scoopfuls of, you know, whatever.
BYRON HURD: Yeah, I've got the snow tires I'm about to put on my Wrangler, my 2011 Wrangler Sport sitting next to the Wranglers outside in the driveway. So I've got my little Wrangler, and then this big enormous 392 XR. And I keep putting the snow tires next to the wheels and tires on both of them to take photos for size comparison.
And these things, you know, they're 225/75R16s, or something like that. Next to these huge 315s on the Extreme Recon they look like they're off of a Willys or something like that.
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, nice.
BYRON HURD: It's amazing how dainty they look. And they're pretty knobby all-terrain snow tires, too. Like they're actually, for what they are, quite aggressive. And then you put them next to something that actually is meant to be aggressive and it's like, oh, I get it.
GREG MIGLIORE: And what year is your Wrangler again?
BYRON HURD: 2011, so it's the last year of the old, terrible 3.8 liter V6.
GREG MIGLIORE: Nah, it's not so bad. Another engine that I actually drove at one point, but not the V8. I feel like we're playing bingo here. Cool. You want to tee that up?
You're going to be reading more about Byron's winter tire adventure in the coming months. What are you doing with these tires? What, you know, what's going on here?
BYRON HURD: So this is a brand new winter all-terrain tire that Nokian launched.
GREG MIGLIORE: Cool.
BYRON HURD: On the day we are recording this, in fact. It is just now public and it is called the Outpost series. This is the Outpost AT, for All Terrain. And it is a genuine, knobby, light truck / SUV all terrain tire design for off road. Heavy duty sidewalls, heavy duty tread protection, all the good stuff. We'll detail it all in an intro post here that's going to go up before the end of the week, we're hoping.
And they are the real deal and they are three peak snow rated tires. Nokian, you know, they're from Finland. They know a thing or two about snow there. Some of their mainstream tires are kind of known as being just good value for money. They're not necessarily like the best of the best in any of their segments.
But when it comes to snow tires they are some of the best, and especially for the money. So we're going to play around with these a little bit. We've got them on a few of our long-term test vehicles right now, too. We're having some fun with Nokian snow tires here and there and it hopefully will be very informative and we'll get some good opportunities to educate our readers and listeners about the benefits of winter tires and snow tires, even in climates where you may not believe you need them.
GREG MIGLIORE: Sounds good. I think I can't wait to read that. I think, hey, 2011 Jeep Wrangler. I'm always a fan of getting more of that vehicle on Autoblog. So hey, you know, makes a lot of sense. Cool.
So we have a Spend My Money update this week. Let me call it up here. From Jason, this was just in our last episode. Just listened to the podcast. Thanks so much. You two read my mind and I appreciate your thoughts.
So he's going to flip the GX. That was sort of the piece of the question about what to do with. He's going to flip that in the coming months and continue searching for the best XJ that he can find, sub- $5,800.
His son just bought his first car, one that was mentioned on the podcast as a possible next collectible. This is my vote, the 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4-liter. And there is a pic attached. So hey. Glad we can help.
I would say, I will reinforce this. I think that generation of Grand Cherokee is going to find status among the collector community. I think it's just starting to reach that like aged status where you know people are going to look at it beyond just like an old junky crossover, you know. I think people are going to start to really appreciate some of the styling elements.
That was actually a different time period, if you will, for the Grand Cherokee. So it was really different than any Grand Cherokee before or after, frankly, and I like it. You still see a bunch of them on the road around here in Michigan. And yeah, $5,800. Let us know what XJ you can come up with. So, any thoughts there, Byron?
BYRON HURD: I'm a fan of that generation, too. In fact, we had that post we did a few weeks ago where we were talking about dumb car ideas that actually turned out to be cool. And that first generation Grand Cherokee SRT8 sticks in my head for that reason.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yes. I forgot about that car.
BYRON HURD: I mean, and you know that became, I think I want to say it was like 2005 or 2006 that it was introduced in that generation of the car. But it was one of those where, you know, it was the best, most complete, most holistically satisfying SRT vehicle that was coming out of Mopar at all. It was better than Charger. It was better than the Magnum. And it was better than the 300.
It was even better, honestly, than the first year of the Challenger. Like you know the first year of a Challenger you couldn't even get a limited-slip rear differential in the SRT model. So it was open diff with a big engine. You know, big head, no thoughts.
So the Grand Cherokee really kind of proved that SRT could make a car that could do a lot of things very quickly that you didn't hate living with and the resale value on those is actually really, really strong. They're hard to find cheap, we'll put it that way.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, those really, along with like the original Lightning of that era, they really kind of captured sort of the zeitgeist of an untapped market of enthusiasts who were looking for sort of non-car but high performance vehicles. And that one, like you, that's--
I don't think I would probably get an SRT one if I ever decided to go down that road for that generation of Jeep. But yeah, I mean totally appreciate it for what it was. I will say this. The Dodge Magnum SRT was definitely, I think maybe the most memorable of that generation of SRTs.
BYRON HURD: Absolutely.
GREG MIGLIORE: There was nothing like it. That's all the time we have this week. Send us your Spend My Moneys at podcast@Autoblog.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Be safe out there. We'll see you next week.
[THEME MUSIC]
In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Associate Editor Byron Hurd, who joins us fresh from the floor at the 2024 New York Auto Show. They start with an overview of the show and this year's big debuts, then pivot to other news for talk …
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In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Electric, John Beltz Snyder. This week, we discuss the North American Car, Truck and Utility of the year winners: The Toyota Prius, Kia EV6 and Ford Super Duty (and Greg explains his votes). In other news, …
In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Associate Editor Byron Hurd. They start by discussing the many cars being continued in 2024 and beyond, including the Chrysler 300C. They also note that the Honda e is toast as well. They discuss the hugs Tesla Autopilot …
