Automobility DART

Vol. 6, No. 50: Section Tw o | Sports | Automotive | Entertainment | Travel | Health and Fitness | katytrailweekly.com

AUTOMOBILITY EcoDiesel offers better mileage, torque

By David Boldt boldface2020@gmail.com

If Jeep owners in Dallas were to drive west to Big Bend, they might take a likin’ to a Wrangler with better economy. And if combining that affection with a line of credit, they’ll find in Jeep showrooms a 2020 Wrangler Unlimited equipped with FCA’s turbocharged diesel, hooked up to an eight-speed automatic. The four-door Wrangler Unlimited, introduced for the 2007 model year, was a homerun from the get-go. Those students of Jeep knew it would work and the only question was why it took so long to build it.

While stretching the wheelbase and overall length worked against those negotiating tight single track, few Jeep owners find themselves on a gravel road and couldn’t find tight single track. Also, the practicality provided by the four-door Unlimited was far better than the notable lack of utility in the two-door, short wheelbase Wrangler. With the twodoor you were driving (at least figuratively) a single slice of pizza, while the Unlimited afforded you the whole pie with, when optioned up, every possible topping.

In Jeep’s redesign for 2018, the Wrangler and Wrangler Unlimited gained a host of improvements. However, none, at least individually, represent the tidal shift afforded by the addition of a diesel to the lineup. With the efficiency of the diesel, along with the oil-burner’s prodigious torque, you have under the hood a powertrain wholly appropriate to a Jeep owner’s off-road agenda. Or, for that matter, a Texan’s Interstate 20 agenda.

Despite the negatives associated with diesels from a handful of European OEMs (think VW, Benz and BMW), the diesel fleet is growing in domestic pickups and Jeep. While the Jeep’s 3.0-liter diesel V6 (similar in spec to what RAM uses in its 1,500 1/2-ton) produces but 260 horsepower, the diesel’s 442 lb.-ft. of torque is in another ballpark. And despite the additional 400 pounds of curb weight associated with this diesel installation, off-the-line response is responsive, and the diesel Wrangler can eat up the highway miles like nobody’s business.

Inside, the Unlimited’s 22 inches of additional wheelbase provide a comfortable environment for four, although given its narrow cabin five will be a push. Also, while our Sahara package provided leather-trimmed seating, the plastics are what you expect in a $30K Wrangler Sport and not what you’d hope to find in a $50K Unlimited. And the Jeep’s greenhouse is everything you’d expect from a two-box profile that remains traditionally vertical. With its $6K premium (when compared to the Wrangler’s standard V6 and a manual trans) it will take some time to pay back the initial outlay. Traveling 15,000 miles a year with the diesel’s 25 combined EPA estimate, you’ll have purchased 600 gallons of diesel at (roughly) $3/gallon — or $1,800 annually. With the gas V6 you’ll get 19 miles per gallon combined, which necessitates buying 790 gallons at $2.50 per gallon — or roughly $2,000 annually. Now, I’m more confident that the diesel will match its EPA estimate than I am that the gas V6 will match its estimate, but even with rounding up to a projected $500 annual savings in fuel, it would take 12 years to recapture your $6,000 outlay. The good news is that Jeeps historically return a big percentage of their initial investment and a diesel-equipped Jeep should do even better.

If it were my money, I’d grab a mirror, look in and ask myself how often I’m actually going off-road? You know, not the gravel excursions down a fire trail, but rocking along where there’s really no pavement and instead of shoulders you’ve got shudders. If the answer was “but a few times a year,” I’d rent a Wrangler for those weekends and spend my $50K on Jeep’s 2020 Grand Cherokee. And I’d get the Hemi V8 while I can still get the Hemi V8.

David Boldt brings years of experience in automotive retail sales and public relations to his automotive reporting. More can be found at txGarage.com.

The 2020 Jeep EcoDiesel. JEE P

Super Bowl LIV hard to chronicle MULL IT OVER

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs.

By David Mullen david@katytrailweekly.com

In a difficult-to-describe Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2 in Miami Gardens, Fla., the Kansas City Chiefs came back from a 10-point fourth quarter deficit with 21 unanswered points for a 31-20 win over the San Francisco 49ers. Sports scribes in the team’s markets had a challenge to capture the elation and deflation in print.

The front-page headline in the Feb. 3 Kansas City Star read, “CHAMPS! A Chiefs party 50 years coming: ‘Like a fantasy, and it all came true.’” In Kansas City, people hardly need a reason to party. But in reality, their star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, named the game’s MVP because they had to award it to someone, struggled for most of the game having Chiefs fans crying in their Boulevard Pale Ale for the first three and one-half quarters.

The sports section headline in the Feb. 3 Bay Area News Group (San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times and others) papers not so subtly stated, “[Head coach Kyle] Shanahan, [quarterback Jimmy] Garoppolo’s 49ers will be defined by their Super Bowl LIV choke.”

Choke is a strong term to describe a 49ers team that rebounded from a fourwin 2018 season to go 15-3 (counting two playoff wins) in 2019 and made it to the promised land. When the 49ers won their last Super Bowl (1995), more than two dozen players on the current roster weren’t even born. Star sportswriter Jeff Rosen penned, “Mahomes, Tyrann Mathieu [safety nicknamed ‘Honey Badger’], [head coach] Andy Reid, [owners] Norma and Clark and the rest of the Hunt family — not to mention every other player on the Chiefs’ 53-man roster, plus countless front-office and support staff, plus anyone who’s ever been associated with or roots for this team — each deserves these moments of joy. The sun rose today in South Florida and back home in KC and everywhere else the Chiefs Kingdom extends, and by God, this not only actually happened but is very much still happening.”

It is hard for me to believe that God had the Chiefs giving San Francisco one and one-half points, but the Holiness probably did watch the commercials.

The article in the Bay Area News Group, written by Dieter Kurtenbach, stated, “As the offensive play-caller of arguably the two worst Super Bowl collapses of all time, Shanahan will be divvied the vast majority of the blame for Sunday’s loss, but upon further review, it’s difficult to say what play he called incorrectly down the stretch. No, the Niners were done in by Shanahan’s overall conservatism and fear of Mahomes in conjunction with a defense that fell apart at the exact wrong moments, a team that lost its focus and a quarterback [Garoppolo] who proved lesser-than when so much more was required. Do the 49ers have a good

enough quarterback to win the Super Bowl? Sunday, the answer was clear: No.”

Bitter words coming from “Baghdad by the Bay” about a young team with the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Nick Bosa and that will be favored to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl next season.

It was not a great game, but Super Bowls rarely are. Of the 54 previous championship games, maybe 10 could be called compelling to the end. The pregame hype this year focused on whether a stingy 49ers defense could slow down Mahomes and a speedy Chiefs team and if Kansas City’s Reid could shake the label of being the winningest coach in NFL history without a victory in the big game.

As a sidebar (as they say in the media business), in the Sept. 6, 2019 edition of this column, I made my Super Bowl prediction. “Kansas City wins their first Super Bowl since the 1969 season and the AFL/NFL merger.” The odds last August were 9 to 1 for the Chiefs to hoist the Vince Lombardi trophy on Feb. 2. I actually got one right, but I am impartial and not particularly a fan of either franchise. And, of course, I did not put my money where my keyboard is.

Call it another great Chiefs comeback capping off a year of countless comebacks or a monumental 49ers collapse, but in cities separated by more than 1,800 miles, viewpoints are lightyears apart.

MASS TRANSIT

New between car barriers coming to DART platforms

By Mark A. Ball mball@dart.org

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) will soon begin installing candlestick-type barriers on all 64 light rail station platforms to prevent injuries from occurring between vehicles.

The new barriers alert visually impaired riders that the space between the cars is not a door opening, thereby deterring them from entering the area and causing injury. They also warn individuals from inadvertently stepping off the platform between the coupled cars.

On Jan. 28, DART’s Board approved a contract with Impact Recovery Systems, Inc. of San Antonio, to provide the equipment for four locations on every DART platform.

Workers will soon begin installing a total of 256 barriers at approximately six inches from the edge of the warning strip, with an anticipated completion date of Friday, July 31.

In other DART news, on Jan. 31, the Board to proceed with handing over the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Trestle Bridge

Structure to the City of Dallas. Board members declared the bridge structure, adjacent to the city’s Moore Park and DART’s Red Line and Blue Line light rail bridges, as surplus to agency needs and agreed to turn the structure over to the city for non-cash considerations. Dallas requested acquiring the structure for the purpose of removing it after the US Army Corps of Engineers Project for Floodway Control concluded removing the bridge would help reduce flood risk and enhance the ecosystem in Dallas’ Trinity River Corridor.