It’s the time of year when retailers who lose money for ten months suddenly start to get profitable, and when, by the way, soup kitchens and other charities are in the most dire need for cash - which will start to come in starting in December (next year, make a mental note to contribute before Thanksgiving!). Our house is starting to get buried in an avalanche of unwanted catalogs, some from companies we’ve never heard of and never ordered from, others from companies we actually do order from, but not every three days.

Personally, I like the people who send out catalogs when they have a reason - like B&H, which appears to send two or three per year, or Digikey, which sends one per year. I loathe companies like Newport News, which appear to have dozens of names for reselling the same rubbish, and appear to believe that we have a bottomless recycling bin. I don’t think the mail carriers particularly like having to make multiple trips on their routes, one with the catalogs, and the other with actual mail. Our mailbox frankly is incapable of handling the holiday load.

This is why I was happy to find http://www.catalogchoice.org/ (NOT .com) — a web site set up by some environmental groups to help us cancel our catalog subscriptions without having to cut out and mail the back page of the catalog to each sender, which is rather time consuming. We took three days’ worth of catalogs and decided which ones we didn’t want. For my wife, that was 18 different catalogs; for me, it was three, two of which appear to have been related to my using FTD. Well, I won’t make that mistake again.

Unfortunately, it seems to take up to ten weeks for the mailers to stop sending catalogs, so we’ll have a glossy, full-color Christmas, but hopefully the new year will bring less four-color advertising delivered to the door. Personally, I can’t imagine that this policy of constantly sending catalogs to anyone and their dog pays off; and I did read, some time ago, that a few companies had actually looked through their mailing lists and struck off people who never ordered (and duplicates going to the same address) without any harm, and, indeed, a massive financial savings. Other companies automatically switch non-customers to a “now and then” catalog receipt category which also saves money, paper, and energy (moving thousands of catalogs across the country, then to recycling plants, then recycling them is not energy-free), while preventing toxic waste from being created.

Do yourself and everyone else a favor. Gather up the unwanted catalogs and instead of trashing or recycling them, put them into a pile, and once a week or so visit http://www.catalogchoice.org/ until you have no more unwanted advertising coming to your front door. Except, of course, from Bank of America. They’re incorrigible.

Manual transmission versions of the 2009 Challenger R/T and SRT models will offer a feature that has previously only been available on the Dodge Ram, Jeep Commander, Grand Cherokee and the Liberty, according to reliable sources. The HSA (Hill Start Assist) feature assists the driver when starting a vehicle from a stop on a hill by maintaining the same level of brake pressure the driver applied for a short period of time after the foot has been removed from the brake pedal. The system will release the brake pedal in proportion to the amount of throttle applied. If the throttle is not applied within a short period of time after the foot has been removed from the brake pedal, Hill Start Assist will release brake pressure.

This feature is particularly helpful on cars which use foot-operated emergency brakes (note - we don’t know what kind of emergency brake the Challenger will have), and in particularly hilly areas or with heavier cars. The presence of Hill Start Assist and the name Trak Pak (applied to the combination of manual transmission, gearing, and limited-slip differential used in manual transmission Challengers) indicates that Dodge is going to take the stick-shift market seriously. This is a welcome change from the past; many who take driving seriously prefer manual transmissions. Even when an automatic or sequential shift provides similar acceleration and gas mileage, there are those who like the feel of the clutch and shifter. The Hill Start Assist does not do away with the overall “clutch experience” but does make it a little easier and more convenient to drive with one, especially for those who have gotten used to an automatic or who are just learning.

Taking stick-shift drivers seriously enough to not only make one available with a premium engine, but also to provide Hill Start Assist and a new/old marketing name to them, tells us that Dodge is off on the right foot with the Challenger.

PS: Please don’t just take the text from this page and post it elsewhere; please give credit to allpar.com and, preferably, paste in this link - http://www.allpar.com/weblogs/ or http://allpar.com/news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=1086

Our friend Rusty Blackwell’s article in Automobile magazine appears in the December issue (pages 134-135). Rusty has on article on the Dodge L’il Red Truck, and he was kind enough to cite Allpar. The issue (”Mean vs. Green” on the cover) should be available at news-stands soon (I checked two groceries with no luck this weekend, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t posted just after I left).

I was also happy to see that Andy Hajenski came through and not only credited Allpar with providing information for the Mopar muscle issue of Street Car and Bike Magazine (yes, it’s a German-language magazine with an English name - and English captions on the front cover!), but also sent me a copy from Germany. I didn’t understand much of the articles, being in German and all, but they looked good and the photography was excellent. If you happen to be in Germany and read German, pick it up at the news-stand! I’m pretty impressed by what I saw. This didn’t seem to be the usual dismissive-and-horribly-inaccurate, “American muscle like the popular best-selling Plymouth GTX and the hot, high-power 3.7 Liter Volare” type of article, and I know that Andy spent a lot of time on research and finding appropriate photography - including rare photos of the Charger concepts.

We may have a third sighting soon - we’ll post the URL if it happens, right back in this article (check back tomorrow?).

By the way, the Allpar classifieds system has gone from one program to another, but both were unsatisfactory and the second one was very heavily spammed, so we’ve reverted to the successful “swap meet” forum sections. Those seem to work well, though the forums aren’t really designed for that sort of thing. I just thought you should know. The menu systems have been changed and there’s an automatic redirect so http://www.allpar.com/class/ now goes to the appropriate forum section. If you haven’t registered for the forums yet - now is a good time.

The Wall Street Journal caused a local uproar by printing a rumor that Dodge cars were on the chopping block, leaving Dodge with wagons and SUVs, and Chrysler with cars. That’s an interesting rumor because it corresponds with an old Daimler plan, the one that brought us Magnum and Caliber, but not Intrepid (which finally came as the Charger) or Neon. (Chrysler has, incidentally, fully and vociferously denied it.)

We’re not sure whether this is a serious plan of action or not. If it is, it should be considered proof that the people at Chrysler really have a hard time understanding their jobs, especially with the Challenger buzz, the Charger gaining credibility, and the Caliber not quite the roaring success it was meant to be. It would also be the death knell of any Chrysler upscale aspirations, unless…

Regulars know where I’m going with this, but it would allow Chrysler to carry out the plan of making Dodge essentially a “truck/brute performance” brand - Charger, Challenger, and trucks - which it’s becoming anyway, with the Avenger being ignored by the market and the Caravan actually falling below the Town & Country for the first time ever. The missing piece would take over the everyday cars - Caliber, Avenger, V6-powered LY car - and let Dodge go with the macho routine and Chrysler slowly float upscale, freed of its inherited Plymouths (Town & Country, PT Cruiser, and Sebring sedan).

Chrysler’s actions will, to many people, show its owners’ intent. Drop Dodge cars, and the remaining loyalists can go on to GM with a clear conscience, knowing that Cerberus plans to strip-and-flip or just plain strip. Add Plymouth - not DeSoto, not Hudson, not Azcor, not Zoomie, not Harcker, but Plymouth - and they show that Chrysler does indeed care (for once) about its owners, its heritage, and its future. It would also show that at least one person in the hierarchy actually understands Chrysler’s brand images - and has some grasp of history. Then the remaining loyalists can bring more people into the fold, assuming, of course, that quality continues to rise, and that the product is there - and not something we’re reluctant to invite friends into.

The PR folk at Dodge have done two very interesting things with the launch of the Viper ACR. First, they gave the Dodge Viper Club first dibs on the release materials, including numerous photos that are ONLY being distributed through the Dodge Viper Club and a video interview posted on the Club web site. This includes information not being distributed through the press releases.

Introducing a car this way is a refreshing change. The Viper club represents the current owners of Dodge Vipers, a key group of people. Imagine if Dodge had launched the new Avenger by inviting the ASOG (Avenger-Sebring Owners Group) to post the press materials first, giving them exclusive photography, and inviting them to interview the engineers or program leaders. It’s a huge sign of respect, and it’s not the way things have always been done; and I suspect it’ll increase the impact of the launch. It may also help to get around the three major gatekeepers of the auto world, namely, the traditional glossy car mags (which typically prefer Hondas and BMWs to, well, anything other than perhaps Corvettes and high-end Mustangs), the ordinary working auto-journalists, and Autoblog.

The second interesting part of the launch is which auto show will get the Viper first: Los Angeles, typically home to either low-importance introductions or “green” vehicles. Sure, the hybrid Durango will probably come out in LA, but bringing out the Viper brings a shot of adrenaline - and a marked contrast to most other vehicles there. I think the Viper will get a lot of headlines, while at Detroit it might have to fight its way through the latest exotic supercar, Camaro or Mustang variant, or whatever “F” car Lexus is going to bring out next.

Kudos to Chrysler.

Oh, and by the way, for our coverage of the new Viper and links to the Viper club, see: http://www.allpar.com/cars/viper/2008-ACR.html.

The first time I visited the Detroit area, I was struck by the incredibly auto-oriented nature of the area - not surprising, perhaps, but when one is coasting down the freeway at speeds that would be hard to maintain in the crowded Northeast, noting that the slow lane is moving at an easy 70 mph, it’s hard to miss. Practically every vehicle on the road is American; there are scatterings of Jaguars (Ford executives?), shaggy Hondas, and Volkswagens (their HQ is in the area too), but they are a clear minority. The national market shares of 1978 are alive and well, to a good degree, in Detroit and associated cities.

The Detroit area is quite spread out, a model of suburban sprawl. You have to drive long distances to get to most places, and the country is pretty flat. The roads are generally quite straight and have high speed limits. Stop signs tend to be three-way or four-way, for reasons I will probably never understand, coming from a region where only one road ever gets a stop.

What makes all the high speeds possible is a focus on actually driving which is notably absent from many parts of the country, particularly my home states of New York and New Jersey. I haven’t noticed any truly inane drivers during my stay in Michigan - albeit just five days now, but it only takes one trip to the grocery in Bergen County to encounter several weaving, aggressive, and reckless cell-phone drivers. Even the relatively reckless drivers in the Detroit region (so far, exclusively commercial vans and full-size SUVs for some reason) seem to be more “with it” than those at home. I wonder if the high speeds force people to focus, or if the focus allows people to drive at high speeds. Either way, roads are often rated at higher speeds than they would be in New Jersey or New York, and they get away with it. People come to full stops at stops signs, instead of the Bergen County “I might slow down a little for the stop,” and close calls seem fewer and farther between.

Ann Arbor is an interesting contrast to nearby Detroit, largely, I suspect, because a number of people from out of the area end up there. You can easily find a Honda dealership, and the Toyota technical center is right in town, so there are more Toys, too. Ann Arbor is seen by some in Michigan as a place where the far-out left-wingers hide, and the foreign cars seem to play into the “America-hating liberal” stereotype so many seem to get, but frankly I’ve never found political views to correlate with domestic-vs-foreign purchases outside of Michigan. The foreign car invasion is more likely due to Ann Arbor’s unique (for the area) economy, depending, as it does, less on General Motors than on the University of Michigan; and even though auto parts and technologies are a big part of the area’s employment, the parts suppliers do business with more than just the Big Three (though to be fair, I suspect the great majority of Delphi’s parts go to GM and Chrysler). Still, the conflicting ethics of buying American and free trade without regard to consequence have not been resolved on a national cultural level. Many conservative and liberal Americans agree on the overriding value of free trade, period-end-of-story, without consideration of environmental impact, slavery, intellectual property rights (in the case of China, mainly), employee health and safety, civil rights, etc. Most people also agree that a free international market is the best way to “raise all boats” and that anything else is somehow wrong — I’m not saying that view is true, just that I believe it is implicitly believed by an overwhelming majority of Americans. I try to explain to people that when they buy American, they are saving their own jobs and working towards their own financial benefit, but they stare blindly at me as though I’m proposing a Communist state. We’ve been told by our leaders for decades that international free trade is the only good way to do anything, after all. (Let’s not even get into trying to convince people to use civil rights and environmental impact in their buying decisions. That’s just not happening. People won’t even use antibiotic-free milk…)

Anyway, coming back to the East coast was wrenching at best. In Ann Arbor I didn’t see anyone fail to stop at a stop sign, though admittedly coming off exit 177 people in the left lane made right turns on red; that’s just weird. On my first trip after coming back, no less than three people ignored the stop signs and pulled out in front, to maintain 15 mph below the speed limit in front of me. (People wonder where road rage comes from.) Then on my second trip a guy in a Lexus tried to pull out from a stopped lane of traffic right in front of me, with no warning, and with no distance… skidding to a halt just before I reached him (and this, in front of a cop!).

Frankly, I have to wonder what’s wrong with us out here. We need to take care of the loose nuts behind the wheel in a big way. It’s time to put down the phones and drive, and I wonder if only a car culture can make us do it. Or is it the famous midwestern politeness that makes Michigan easier? Wausau, Wisconsin is also far easier to drive around in, but they drive so slowly I feel that I missed out on the free ‘ludes.