Freaky Friday: When Your Truck Sings the Song of Six, but the Badge Reads 'Hemi'

Don’t you hate it when you’ve bragged to your friends for months about the brawny V8 engine in your Ram 1500, only to check the oil one day and discover it’s a V6?

That’s the joke Fiat Chrysler Automobiles accidentally played after a badging mix-up at the assembly plant. Also in the news this week is a Canadian town that tortures drunk drivers with godawful Nickelback tunes, as well as an Australian suspect who stopped for gas a number of times during a high-speed police pursuit.

The thriftiest Hemi around

According to Automotive News, a technical service bulletin issued to dealers points to an embarrassing FCA screwup. Apparently, some Pentastar-powered 2017 Ram 1500s left the factory advertising a displacement that the engine couldn’t match.

Yes, Hemi badges found their way onto 3.6-liter pickups. Sorry about that, owners who thought they were just being light on the throttle.

FCA proposed an easy solution to dealers:

If the vehicle has Hemi emblems installed and the vehicle does not have a Hemi engine, the emblem will need to be removed.”

We don’t know how many vehicles FCA produced with a double identity, or if any of them found their way into a customer’s hands. Nor is it clear what the window sticker stated on these two-faced trucks. If anyone you know owns a new Hemi 1500, ask them, “Does that thing have a Pentastar?”

Move over Noriega

This is how your remind me…of Panama.

A small town in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island — a province so small that it once prompted a TTAC Slack discussion about whether it contains rivers — has added torture to its tool kit for the handling of impaired drivers.

According to the National Post, the Kensington, PEI police department recently adopted a tactic straight out of the late 80s. Back in ’89, the United States Delta Force cranked it up to 11 outside the hiding place of Panamanian president Manuel Noriega as a psychological warfare tactic. Operation Nifty Package was ultimately successful.

Well, if you’re caught boozing and driving in Kensington, expect an earful on the way to the slammer. The department has promised to serenade scofflaws with Nickelback songs. Remember, those rear doors don’t open from the inside.

“When we catch you, and we will catch you, on top of a hefty fine, a criminal charge and a years driving suspension we will also provide you with a bonus gift of playing the office’s copy of Nickelback in the cruiser on the way to jail,” the police department wrote in a recent Facebook post.

Nickelback, of course, is an atrociously awful Canadian post-grunge band that’s responsible for many broken stereo knobs and failed relationships. Loving homes can accommodate both Republicans and Democrats, but they can’t house a Nickelback fan and hater.

Once, twice, three times a fill-up

A high-speed police chase last week near Melbourne, Australia led to tense moments and several gas stations stiffed out of money.

As reported by Carscoops, the 15-year-old driver of a late model BMW 3 Series filled with teens hit speeds of 93 miles per hour during a joyride that turned into a police chase. Dodging vehicles like a kangaroo on acid, the driver’s aggressiveness forced police to hang back. That was good news for the teen, as the BMW was low on gas.

While a police helicopter recorded the chase from overhead, the driver stopped at three gas stations during the course of the chase, each time filling up with only a liter or two of fuel. Like the golden age of Australian cinema, all things eventually come to an end, but this chase didn’t result in the arrest of the driver.

After his female passengers bailed, the driver reportedly got away.

[Images: © 2016 Mark Stevenson/The Truth About Cars; Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY 2.0)]