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A routine trademark filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had Mopar fans refreshing message boards for weeks after Fiat Chrysler quietly renewed its claim on the word ‘Cuda,’ two years after doing the same for ‘Barracuda.’ Corporate lawyers rarely do anything without a reason. Read on to find out what the filing does, and does not, actually confirm.
In January 2017, the Detroit auto show had to share the headlines with an FBI arrest, a billion-dollar penalty, and a federal Notice of Violation. Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt was detained at a Florida airport over Dieselgate, Takata agreed to pay $1 billion for its deadly airbag inflators, and the EPA accused Fiat Chrysler of undisclosed emissions software on roughly 104,000 diesel trucks and SUVs. Why should muscle car fans care about any of it? Read on for what those three scandals say about the industry that builds the cars we love.
The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon started at $84,995 and left the factory with 808 horsepower. The 840-horsepower figure everyone quoted required one additional box on the order sheet, and that box cost exactly one dollar. It is one of the strangest pricing decisions in modern automotive history, and Dodge would revisit the same trick years later on a much larger scale. Here is what a single dollar actually bought.
Fiat Chrysler’s decision to renew its trademark on the Cuda name reignited a rumor that has refused to die for the better part of a decade: that Dodge might resurrect one of Mopar’s most storied nameplates. The renewal alone proves nothing, since automakers routinely protect names they have no plans to use. Read on to find out what the paperwork actually reveals, and why the speculation keeps coming back.