On paper, the Challenger Rallye Redline looks pretty excessive. The engine has only six cylinders, but it still makes 305 hp, enough to hustle this car around at police-annoying speeds. The stereo, which is the second of three levels (it's an optional extra, but audiophiles can pay extra for a more capable setup), is ear-splittingly loud. The wheels are 20-inchers; while this won't impress your local rap superstar, they're still really big. "Really big" also describes the Challenger's body, which appears to have eaten a smaller muscle car on its way to your driveway.

When staff photographer Patrick Hoey and I needed to drive to New Jersey for a photo shoot, I didn't think twice before signing out the Dodge Dart. The Dart hadn't ventured far from Ann Arbor since it arrived in December, and I wanted to see how it would deal with long-distance travel. The few staffers who had taken longer trips in the Dart, however, praised it as a high-speed cruiser.

Rumors of the Dodge Durango's death were greatly exaggerated. Although we heard Chrysler was axing Dodge's three-row sport utility, paving the way for a Jeep product riding on the same platform, the plans has changed. The Durango remains part of Dodge's portfolio, and receives a moderate mid-cycle update for the 2014 model year.

The Dodge Dart didn't venture far from home during its third month in our care, covering just 574 miles since our last update. The few staffers who drove the car were smitten with the optional touchscreen navigation and audio interface.

Staffers are warming up to the 2013 Dodge Dart after some four weeks of whining about its clunky dual-clutch automatic transmission. We didn't fully make peace with the dry-clutch gearbox, although we found good reasons to love our Four Seasons Dart SXT in spite of its drivetrain. For one, the affordable compact car swallows freeway miles in the best tradition of larger Detroit iron.

The 2012 Dodge Charger, though a new design, is in many ways a relic. We got our first glimpse of the car in December 2008, when Chrysler invited deputy editor Joe DeMatio to preview future products (remember, this was a time when many assumed Chrysler didn't have future products). DeMatio saw a promising Jeep Grand Cherokee and a nicely massaged Chrysler 300. But the biggest surprise was an absolutely stunning new Charger that stepped out of the 300's shadow with a sculpted body, full-width taillamps, and a modern interior. "That's a Charger I wouldn't mind being seen in," he said, although he mused that Chrysler might go broke before he got the chance. That chance arrived when the U.S. government and Fiat stepped in, even if it's safe to say that neither were too excited about the large rear-wheel-drive sedans that had been pushed through by the previous regime. "I won't even tell you the amount of money that the platform costs -- you'd be shocked out of your pants," said new CEO Sergio Marchionne in the fall of 2009. "But it's done, and life will move on."

Sum Up

Sum Up

We're only one month into our year-long test of a 2013 Dodge Dart, and already the logbook has a contentious mix of accolades and annoyances. Things may settle down once we accumulate more miles, but for now our Four Seasons Dart is off to a rough start -- in more ways than one.

As associate editor David Zenlea parked our Charger on the streets of southern Florida, part of a 3000-mile trip that would take nine days, he felt out of place. Well, he himself didn't feel out of place -- a short Jewish man hardly stands out in southern Florida -- but he felt that the Charger was. Here's a very big, very brash, very black sedan wading in a pool of brightly colored, high-dollar imports. "People acted as if they had been walking along the beach on a hot day and stumbled upon a fat north woods hick wearing a flannel shirt and snow boots," he says. "And you know what? I loved it."

It's been a long time since a Dodge was at the top of the compact-car heap. We named the original Neon our Automobile of the Year back in 1994, but later versions of the Neon and its successor, the Caliber, lagged far behind the competition. The new 2013 Dart, however, appears poised to change Dodge's fortune in the small-car segment.

When it comes to service and maintenance with our long-term 2012 Dodge Charger, it's starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day. In both June and July we dealt with a corroded airbag harness that was causing the instrument panel to show a malfunction. In October we were again thrown back to June, having picked up on a shimmy in the steering wheel indicative of another bent wheel.

It's nearly impossible to drive our long-term Dodge Charger and not interact with the huge 8.4-inch touchscreen, and yet we've hardly touched on the car's infotainment technology in previous monthly updates. Perhaps that's because the Uconnect system, which manages the stereo, heated seats, climate controls, navigation, Bluetooth, and backup camera, works so well. The controls are intuitive, displays are legible, and common procedures are logical and straightforward.

I once met a guy who seemed to think quite highly of himself for surviving three Michigan winters in a Pontiac G8 shod with the stock summer tires. His expert advice for anyone attempting such idiocy? "Never stop at a red light in the snow. You'll never get going again." Six feet under, in Westminster Abbey, Charles Darwin smiled. If your car can't find the traction to get to 10 mph, your game plan probably shouldn't include running red lights.

Among our Four Seasons cars, the sporty Charger is an unlikely choice for a camping outing, but that's exactly where associate web editor Jake Holmes took our Dodge for a long weekend in August. With two friends along for the ride, Holmes drove west to Michigan's P.J. Hoffmaster State Park where our Blacktop-edition Charger attracted a lot of attention. "As we lounged by the campfire on Tuesday night, a family walked past and their young son wondered out loud, 'Whoa, is that a Corvette or a Mustang?'" Holmes reported. "The next day, as we were packing up our tents, a neighboring camper came to ask about and look at the Charger. He was a Londoner who had moved to the U.S. eight years ago and had towed a camper behind his VW Touareg. As he surveyed the Charger, he commented on how sporty and aggressive it looks."

If you want to use a new convertible to tow anything larger than a Jet Ski these days, your options are pretty much limited to a Jeep Wrangler. In the early 1970s, however, there were a number of beefy, open-air vehicles on the market, such as the Chevrolet Blazer, the Ford Bronco, the International Scout, the Toyota Land Cruiser, and, of course, the Wrangler's predecessor, the CJ, which drove straight off WWII battlefields and has been for sale ever since.

We added more than 3000 miles to our Charger's odometer in July, recording the busiest month for the Dodge since it arrived in January. A bulk of those miles can be credited to photographer A.J. Mueller who enlisted our Charger to scout a photo shoot in Nashville, Tennessee. During the long trek down I-75, Mueller noted that the Charger is blessed with "amazing, big, beefy seats that let you ride in serious comfort." He also came away impressed by the Dodge's frugality over 1400 miles. "The gas mileage was very impressive and the tank never seemed to get down to E." In fact, the Charger's fuel log shows multiple fill-ups of just about half a tank; Mueller and his crew couldn't outlast the massive 19.1-gallon tank. Averaging 26 mpg -- well above the Charger's 23-mpg EPA city/highway combined rating -- they could have covered as much as 500 miles on a single tank.

The majority of the compact-sedan class has been heavily revised or totally redesigned in the past two years, and Dodge has just rolled out its Alfa Romeo-based Dart, the latest entry in a hotly contested segment. Will the Dart be able to topple the best of the bunch from the top spot?

The traditional four-door sedan long ago fell out of favor as America's family car. Minivans, crossovers, and crew-cab trucks have become the default choice for anyone who has kids in tow. Bucking that trend, copy editor Rusty Blackwell picked our Dodge Charger for a long weekend road trip with his wife and two daughters in early June. With no shortage of crossovers to choose from, Blackwell thought the big sedan was his best bet among our Four Seasons offerings for hauling his brood and their baggage. Having championed the Charger to an All-Star Award last fall, he wasn't let down by his selection.

Big size plays a big role in building up the Dodge Charger's image. The full-size dimensions are nearly as important to the car's imposing presence as the sculpted sheet metal. But is the Charger too big to be practical? During the month of May, several of our drivers called attention to the Charger's proportions with both positive and negative undertones.

Buying a new car -- like lying to your mother, getting a tattoo, or tying the knot -- is difficult to undo. Once you've signed on the dotted line and accepted the keys, you're stuck with your choice -- or forced to swallow a big financial loss if you decide to sell it or trade it in. One of the functions of an Automobile Magazine Four Seasons test is to explore the waters before you commit to years of monthly payments. So what are we second-guessing with our long-term Dodge Charger? Here's senior editor Joe Lorio, who recently took his first extended drive in our Four Seasons car and found a very different experience from his previous stint in Dodge's full-size sedan.

It's been said that fashion repeats itself on a twenty-year cycle. If you don't believe that also applies to the automotive industry, might we suggest you blow the dust off a January 1994 issue of this very magazine, in which we celebrated the new Dodge Neon, our surprise choice for Automobile of the Year.

200. That’s the number of new and updated cars that are scheduled to debut over the next twenty-four months. You don’t really want to read about every reskin or 5-hp bump, so we’ve filtered that list down to the 25 cars you most need to know about. Much of our information is hard fact, while some of it is educated guesswork or pure conjecture. We have included a “speculation meter” for each car to indicate what’s what. Here, then, is the scoop on the cars you will be hearing a lot about over the next two years.

In the final days of February, our 2012 Dodge Charger faced its first big road trip: a quick run to Michigan's Upper Peninsula that called for 1100 miles and 18 hours of driving in two and a half days. Extra seat time -- both on the long highway run and closer to Ann Arbor -- has led several staffers to deliver new praise for the Charger in the third month of its stay.

Barry Manilow’s 1970s hit song “Looks Like We Made It” wasn’t blaring from the loudspeakers on the Chrysler stand at the Javits Center in Manhattan today, but it might as well have been. There was no better way for Chrysler to announce to the world that it’s back from the brink, it’s made it through its bankruptcy and painful restructuring, and it fully expects to thrive than by taking the wraps off the 2013 SRT Viper at the 2012 New York Auto Show. After all, imagine how unlikely a new Viper was only three years ago, when Chrysler almost went out of business altogether. If the company survived, bread-and-butter products like family sedans, crossovers, and pickup trucks would, naturally, have to command the bulk of product-development dollars. How could there possibly be interest in something as indulgent as a low-volume, expensive, high-performance sports car?