Photo: Kleber Silva
Five years ago, Fiat showed the world it was a brand with untapped potential by revealing the Toro. This is a smaller pickup for the emerging South American market that has attention-grabbing styling.
Fiat's road cars feel like they are stuck due to a lack of development funding. It is pretty safe to say that the 500X was a bad idea, and most of the other models they sell feel like they're built on a budget.
That is not necessarily a bad thing; the Toro is built on a budget too, but its cool side-opening bed doors and narrow headlights immediately grab your attention. Today, we are going to consider what would happen if that budget were to stretch a little further.
The rendering artist Kleber Silva created a chimera he calls the Dodge Toro R/T. Obviously, such a truck does not exist, but it's not completely farfetched either.
The Toro is based on the same platform as the Fiat 500X, the Jeep Compass, and Renegade. So it's a unibody vehicle, and the R/T performance enhancements really would be possible. The obvious ones are big brakes, stiff suspension and better tires.
Silva's rendering borrows the front grille and headlights from a Durango, while the shaker hood is more in line with a Challenger R/T. Either way, you're supposed to presume that a HEMI V8 is under the hood, and that's a little unlikely.
Instead, we would imagine the Toro R/T with a Dart SRT-4 powertrain. According to the 2014 five-year plant of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), this was supposed to be ready by 2016, probably powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder. Dodge engineers wanted to hit 300 horsepower and have AWD in the Dart, all of which sounds perfect for the Toro R/T.
The Fiat pickup is actually part of the Dodge family now, as it's sold as the Ram 1000 in a few countries. But a high-performance model probably is not possible without it being sold in the United States.
That is not necessarily a bad thing; the Toro is built on a budget too, but its cool side-opening bed doors and narrow headlights immediately grab your attention. Today, we are going to consider what would happen if that budget were to stretch a little further.
The rendering artist Kleber Silva created a chimera he calls the Dodge Toro R/T. Obviously, such a truck does not exist, but it's not completely farfetched either.
The Toro is based on the same platform as the Fiat 500X, the Jeep Compass, and Renegade. So it's a unibody vehicle, and the R/T performance enhancements really would be possible. The obvious ones are big brakes, stiff suspension and better tires.
Silva's rendering borrows the front grille and headlights from a Durango, while the shaker hood is more in line with a Challenger R/T. Either way, you're supposed to presume that a HEMI V8 is under the hood, and that's a little unlikely.
Instead, we would imagine the Toro R/T with a Dart SRT-4 powertrain. According to the 2014 five-year plant of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), this was supposed to be ready by 2016, probably powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder. Dodge engineers wanted to hit 300 horsepower and have AWD in the Dart, all of which sounds perfect for the Toro R/T.
The Fiat pickup is actually part of the Dodge family now, as it's sold as the Ram 1000 in a few countries. But a high-performance model probably is not possible without it being sold in the United States.
Google News