The Ford Maverick is a small pickup truck. It’s built to carry cargo and handle everyday driving without being as big or expensive as many trucks. It’s mentioned because other companies are trying to compete with this kind of compact truck.
Ram is a brand that mainly makes pickup trucks. The podcast is saying Ram plans to sell a compact pickup in the U.S. that’s meant to compete with the Ford Maverick. That’s why Ram is brought up in the compact pickup conversation.
The Rampage is a planned compact pickup truck expected to arrive around 2028. The podcast says it will be based on a Ram pickup that’s sold in South America. It’s being discussed because it’s intended to compete in the same small-truck category as the Maverick.
The Jeep Compass is a compact SUV, meaning it’s sized for daily driving and city use. The podcast is mentioning it because the company changed where it will be built. That can influence when vehicles are available and how production is managed.
The Dodge Viper is a sports car made for very fast driving. It’s known for being powerful and performance-focused rather than practical. The podcast is using it as a reference point for a new sporty coupe idea.
The Jeep Wrangler is an off-road SUV made for rough roads and trails. It’s known for features that let you open up the cabin, like removable roof and doors on many models. The podcast is referencing a Wrangler-based concept that blends SUV and pickup-like ideas.
The Jeep Gladiator is a Jeep that has a truck bed instead of a traditional SUV cargo area. It’s designed for off-road driving, similar to the Wrangler. The podcast mentions it because it represents the “pickup” side of that Wrangler/Gladiator mix.
Badge engineering means taking one car and selling it under a different brand. Usually the changes are mostly cosmetic, like the front styling, not a whole new design.
SRT is a performance badge that usually means the vehicle is tuned to be quicker and more aggressive than the standard version. It often comes with a stronger engine and sportier setup.
Term
777 horsepower
Horsepower is a measure of how much power the engine makes. “777 horsepower” is an extremely high number meant to signal a very fast, performance-oriented truck.
The Dodge Challenger is a muscle car built for fast acceleration. The podcast is talking about a very powerful version, around 777 horsepower, and that it was shown driving on a track. It’s mentioned because it’s a top-end performance example of the model.
They’re talking about the Middle East as a key place where oil ingredients are produced. If plants in that region stop making product, it can make motor oil harder to get worldwide.
Synthetic oil is a type of motor oil that’s made to be more consistent and stable than regular oil. That can help it protect your engine better, especially in extreme temperatures.
Motor oil is made from base oils, and “group three” and “group four” are two types of those base oils. They’re important because if there’s a shortage of these base oils, lots of different oil brands can end up affected.
Term
second quarter of 2027
They’re giving a rough calendar estimate for when the oil shortage might ease. The point is that it could take a long time to fully recover.
API is a big U.S. oil-industry organization. When they issue an emergency statement, it usually means there’s a serious problem affecting how fuel and oil are made or delivered.
0W-20 is a type of engine oil. The “0W” part means it’s easier to start in cold weather, and the “20” part describes how thick it stays when the engine is hot.
Transmission fluid is the liquid that keeps the transmission’s moving parts lubricated and helps it shift gears. If it’s missing or wrong, the transmission can’t work properly.
Supply chain delays mean it takes too long for parts to reach the factory and then for the finished cars to reach buyers. That’s why shortages can keep hurting production for months.
Freight cost is what it costs to move goods from one place to another. If it gets more expensive, it can make shortages and higher prices more likely.
LIVE
Fraud is no longer just a risk for auto dealers,
it has become part of everyday operations.
Experian Automotive's Fraud Protect solution
helps you catch income, identity, and trade in fraud
in real time without slowing down the sale.
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Welcome to Daily Drive for Friday, May 22nd, 2026.
I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas today on the show.
Ram jumps into the compact pickup ring against the Maverick.
Stellantis sees opportunities for its idled Brampton plant
and Toyota, Lexus, and Mazda are cutting off
broker deals in New Jersey.
Plus, the Iran War is creating a growing shortage
of motor oil and it's hitting dealerships
and service centers hard.
There's only X amount right now in the world
and we're all grabbing it and we're all paying
stupid price for it to have it,
which means that our customers are gonna have
to pay stupid price, which means our consumers
are gonna have to pay stupid price.
Let's run through all the news you need to know
to keep up in the auto industry.
Ram is bringing a Maverick fighter
to the US market starting in 2028.
The compact pickup will be based on the Ram Ram page sold
in South America.
It will be Ram's third pickup line in the US,
alongside the full-size Ram and a planned mid-size model
also expected in 2028.
The move puts Ram head-to-head with Ford's Maverick,
which has been a hit since it launched in 2021,
with sales topping 150,000 last year.
It's all part of a bigger plan to grow Ram's
North America sales 60% by 2030
and make it Stellantis' top-selling brand.
With that and all of the other new products
coming from Stellantis in the near future,
the automaker says there are meaningful potential opportunities
for its idled Brampton assembly plant in Ontario.
The Toronto area plant has been sitting idle since 2023,
after Stellantis halted a retooling project
and moved the Jeep Compass program to Illinois instead.
Vito Beato, president of Unifor 1285,
says the new product Slate is a positive sign,
but the union needs answers
on what will actually be built in Brampton.
And the financial service arms of Toyota, Lexus, and Mazda
are cutting off lease and retail contracts
that involve brokered deals in New Jersey.
The reason?
A March memo from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission
reminding dealers they're not supposed to be arranging
brokered deals in the state in the first place.
Toyota and Lexus' new policy took effect May 20th.
Mazda's kicks in June 2nd.
It's the latest battle between some New Jersey dealers
and brokers, fighting over sales and market share.
And those are today's headlines.
You can find more details on all those stories
at AutoNews.com.
We're still sorting through all the news
from Stellantis' Investor Day on Thursday.
Our own Vince Bond Jr. is here to help us out with that.
Vince, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thank you.
You had a very busy day yesterday
and still plenty of work to follow up on all of it.
You got to see some of these future products.
What were your impressions?
Yeah, yeah.
So Stellantis really pulled back the curtain for us
and just let us see what's coming over the next four years
or so.
I was actually surprised.
I asked the spokesperson, like, is this even on the record?
You're giving us so much future info.
So, but yeah, they pulled back the curtain
and we got a chance to see the Copperhead.
So the Copperhead is like a,
I will call it like a successor to the Viper.
It's a sporty coupe.
It has like a huge spoiler,
like the Viper ACR had back in the day.
So this thing is geared towards, you know, high speed.
They didn't give us any detail on it,
but it looks, you know, mean and ready for a track.
And so that was a big surprise yesterday.
They showed us something called the Wrangler Scrambler.
So it's sort of almost like a mix
between the Wrangler and the Gladiator.
It's based on an old model, you know,
from about 40 years ago.
It's like a compact pickup sort of, you know, design.
But yeah, that thing is going to have an SRT variant in it.
They showed us the redesign on the Gladiator
that's also on the way.
That has like an old school front end
they're going to put on there.
It's going to get the 392 Hemi
at some point in the next couple of years.
So that's going to be a big power surge for the Gladiator.
And then they also showed us some Chrysler products.
Yeah, so two of these models
are going to be based on Fiat products.
And they're going to basically just, you know,
badge engineer them, you know,
change the front ends a little bit.
But it's basically the same product
that they're going to have in that same Europe.
They're going to bring that to the US.
And so those two Chryslers are going to start under $30,000.
And then there's a third Chrysler crossover coming
that they showed us is more of a midsize.
And that's going to be based on their new,
still a one platform, a global platform.
And so we got a chance to see a lot of stuff,
a lot of redesigns, the Durango.
I wasn't a fan of the redesign on that one.
The front end is a little quirky looking.
Maybe because the, you know,
Durango hasn't been redesigned so long
that it's just jarring to see that.
But yeah, they just really,
they put all the stops yesterday, man.
It showed us everything that's coming.
So Vince, with all of this new future products,
were there any EVs, any hybrid powertrains,
or was everything just gas powered, V8s,
Hemi's, monster engines?
And I assume the Copperhead might get a V10
like the old school Viper, right?
So they were a little,
they didn't share a lot of details on powertrains,
but obviously with the Wrangler scrambler,
they said it's going to have a SRT variant.
So you can guess that's going to be a V8.
Yeah, it was all pretty much gas from what I could tell.
Yeah.
Cool.
And then do you think this is the product turnaround
that Stellantis dealers have been waiting for?
I think so, I think so.
I mean, you go from the, you know,
they have the Ram 1500 Rumblebee,
the muscle trucks we're going to get into.
We'll start seeing those later this year
and early next year.
The top level for that one is going to be a 777 horsepower.
You know, with the Hellcat engine,
we had a chance to see it on a track a couple of days ago
and it's just, it was out there hollering, it's a monster.
And so the Rumblebee pickup is going to be a huge addition
to the lineup.
There's so much stuff coming.
You know, the midsize pickup that's on the way,
they're going to bring a compact pickup
from South America called a Rampage.
So that's going to come to the U.S.
and compete with the Ford Maverick.
And so they have everything covered from, you know,
pickups, you know, SUVs, affordable products,
under $30,000.
And then the top end stuff, like, you know, the,
the scrambler and even the copperhead.
So yeah, so whatever you want, they have it coming.
Sounds like they're checking off all the boxes.
Vince Bond, Jr., thank you so much for joining me.
No, thank you.
Coming up, how the Iran war is creating a motor oil shortage.
That's next on daily drive.
Robotaxies are moving from novelty to reality.
And this week on shift, we're digging into what it takes
to scale them safely.
Neuro-COO Andrew Chapin talks about the company's
partnership with Uber and Lucid,
a plan that could put more than 20,000
Lucid neuro-robotaxies on the road,
starting in the Bay Area.
We are really trying to achieve a superhuman safety bar
over the long term.
That is the expectation of the public.
Chapin also explains why he doesn't buy the idea
that there will be a huge number
of commoditized autonomous vehicle providers.
And where he sees neuro taking the biggest risks
in making robotaxies truly ubiquitous.
Join us for shift, available this Sunday,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Fraud is no longer just a risk for auto dealers.
It has become part of everyday operations.
According to Experian Automotive,
nearly nine out of 10 dealers say fraud is a top concern
and 70% say it's on the rise.
We're talking about real deals slipping through,
costing dealerships 10, even $20,000 per incident.
And it's not just one type of fraud.
You've got forged income documents,
fabricated salaries, synthetic identities,
even trade-in scams.
The worst part, catching fraud often slows everything down,
adding friction to deals
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That's where Experian Automotive's
fraud protect solution comes in.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive, I'm Kellan Walker.
The Iran War has everyone talking about gas prices,
but there's another shortage that's arrived
and it's getting worse every day.
75% of additives for synthetic motor oils
come from the Middle East or Korea.
And with three major plants in the region shut down,
the supply is dwindling fast.
Arnold Gasita is president of Petra Automotive Products.
He spoke with Automotive News senior retail editor, Dan Shine,
about how the shortage is affecting dealerships,
service centers, and even vehicle manufacturing.
Arnold, thanks so much for joining me on Daily Drive.
Thank you, Dan, appreciate you letting me be on.
You know, we talk about the war in Iran
and everyone talks about gas prices
and rising gas prices here,
but there is another shortage that is on the horizon,
maybe it's even arrived, and that's with motor oil.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, it's arrived.
It's here and every day it just gets worse and worse.
So 75% of our additives for all synthetic oils and components.
So that means your 0W20, your 0W80,
synthetic CVT, synthetic ATF, 75% is made
either in the Middle East or Korea.
So it's here and there's a shortage problem.
Did you know, I mean, did you kind of when this conflict
began in the Middle East that, you know,
do you think, oh, it just carries on a little bit.
This could be trouble or was it just kind of,
it kind of came along and said, oh, wait a minute,
now this could be...
You know, most of us in the automotive,
either oil or chemical industry,
we all thought it was going to be temporary.
So I think it did catch us a little bit off guard
because everybody thought this was gonna be
a quick issue with Iran and it's turned out
into a long issue with no end in sight.
So we have had to react to the situation,
but unfortunately there's not much reacting, right?
You have 75% of the supply that comes from these two regions,
Asia and the Middle East.
And so now it's just a matter of who has supplies,
the price people want to pay for it.
And every month and every day that this thing
goes longer and longer,
well, your supply shrinks and shrinks
until there is no supply.
There's no supply being produced.
And as you know, the Straits of Horowitz is shut down.
So this is not a, let's turn on the switch tomorrow.
This is what are the supplies left in the world?
Who's gonna pay the price for it?
And then every day that supply increases in price
and shortens in the availability of it.
And then we end up out.
So I know Petra manufactures a lot of their products
in Houston, in Texas.
But this is just something that you don't, you need,
you still need a supply from the Middle East
or from Asia in order to make some of your stuff,
make some of your products.
Yeah, that's correct.
It's all of us, whether it's Shell or Valvalline
or whoever, me, anything that's synthetic,
which is a group three or group four,
predominantly group three product is made in Korea
or the Middle East.
Korea does about 30% of it.
And I think Middle East does about 45% or so of it.
So it doesn't matter what company it is.
If you're dealing with oil and synthetics,
we're all buying it from over there.
And there's three main plants in the Middle East
that are shut down, down today.
I mean, they're not producing it and they're stuck.
And so, in the industry today, we look at it
that if the problem was to be solved tomorrow,
it would be second quarter of 2027
before we get this back to normal.
Yeah, wow.
And as you sit there today, how is your supply?
Are you sitting on a King's ransom?
And if you have supply, are people trying to come in
and get, well, so I think, so yes, I mean, yes and no,
because what has happened is anybody that has supplies
to realize what was going on started buying ahead, right?
So we bought months and of inventory,
but as that inventory worldwide shrinks,
you might have bought six months worth of additives
that are now selling in 30 days, right?
Because everybody's out.
I mean, I can show you countless of emails
from OEs and dealerships saying,
hey, I am out of this, my supplier doesn't have it,
do you have this?
And if you say yes, it's not like,
hey, well, send me, you know, 6,000 gallons.
It's like, send me, you know, 450,000 gallons.
It's a big, big thing.
So when you say you have it,
you now have to start allocating.
So just like you're being allocated on a supply,
you now have to allocate, okay, well, you get this much,
you get this much,
because we're all running out of it, right?
There's only X amount right now in the world,
and we're all grabbing it,
and we're all paying stupid price for it to have it,
which means that our customers
is gonna have to pay stupid price,
which means our consumers
are gonna have to pay stupid price.
But it's what it is, is if you want it, that's what it is.
I mean, API put out, they have a name for it.
I think it's called emergency provision.
And API put out a emergency provision,
which I don't remember the last time they've ever done that,
maybe COVID, but the last time
they've done emergency provision to the OEMs.
What that means is, okay, Mr. OEM,
you're requiring 0W20 in the vehicles,
we're gonna run out.
What's your backup plan, and will you accept 10W30?
And I'm just making that number right,
but 0W20 is on the list of running out.
This is one of the oils that is gonna run out.
So OEMs, can we use an alternative?
Can we use group two instead of group three
to make that oil and will you accept it
and not void the warranty?
I mean, API literally is issued an emergency statement.
But the problem is that it just trickles down, right?
So group two is now being reassigned to produce diesel fuel
because there's obviously a demand,
a bigger demand for diesel fuel with a bigger margin, right?
We need transportation.
We need to be able to move things across the world.
So, Dan, it's little by little
trickling to be quite a bit of a mess.
I wouldn't say it's as bad as COVID yet,
because COVID affected so many different things.
But I will tell you that in the oil and chemical world,
it's a big thing, probably just as bad as COVID.
Wow, and you've been in the business a long time.
34 years, I had hair.
And this impacts everybody.
I mean, from your dealership group here,
independent repair shops or quick looms, everybody.
Anybody that buys oil, so your first and lubricants, right?
So your first gauge of this was gasoline prices, right?
Now it's gonna be oil prices.
The next thing is shortage of, right?
So you're gonna go get an old change
and they're gonna say, we don't have zero W20,
can we put five W20?
Or we don't have this, and can we do that?
Your car may need transmission fluid.
And that fluid, all the vehicles today
require synthetic fluid, is not available.
It will eventually affect the manufacturing, right?
So the manufacturers will not be able to produce the vehicle
because they can't put transmission fluid
in the transmission, right?
Almost like the chip thing back in COVID.
So you can make the car, but we're gonna sit it there
because we got no transmission fluid to put into it.
Eventually, all of these supplies go away
and you end up in a situation
unless they do something alternative like APIs requesting.
But even then, the supply, unless this war ends,
and again, if it ended today,
we're still nine months out to fix
in the problem at this point.
Yeah, it's crazy, I mean, yeah.
Yeah, it takes a long time to get to supply chain.
Well, it does.
And it takes a long time to get to the consumer
and then away from the consumer, right?
So as the freight cost continues to go up
and shortages and diesel also go up,
you're gonna see everything go up, right?
Food's gonna go up.
Not necessarily because of the egg,
but because of the freight to get the egg to you.
And so it little by little trickles down.
It'll eventually trickle down to clothing.
The petroleum that's used in clothing
because they're gonna use that petroleum for something else.
And it's really like your hands are kind of tied.
There's not much you can do, right?
I mean, you can, there's-
There is nothing we can do.
Yeah.
I mean, hope and pray that this thing ends sooner than later
because it is a problem.
Wow.
Harold, great chatting with you
and great insight into this growing problem.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, you too, Dan.
Thanks for having me on.
Arnold Gassita of Petra Automotive Products
spoke with our own Dan Shine.
That's Daily Drive for today.
I'm Kellan Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News executive producer, Jake Neer,
as well as our own Vince Bond Jr., Michael Martinez
and Molly Boygon for their reporting for today's podcast.
We also have reporting from David Kennedy
of our sibling publication, Automotive News Canada.
You can get the latest news on Ram's new compact pickup,
Stellantis' turnaround plan
and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
Come back over the weekend
for our weekend drive edition of the show.
Our panel of Automotive News reporters
breaks down the week's biggest stories,
including Stellantis' bold turnaround plan.
Banking on big V8s is your ticket to prosperity.
I don't know that that's a great plan,
but hey, you know, as we say with every one of these,
every five years, we'll see.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know what you think of the show
and the topics we cover today.
Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com
or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
And if you enjoy the podcast, remember to like,
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About this episode
Motor-oil trouble is getting worse for dealerships and service centers, with synthetic additives heavily tied to the Middle East and Korea and production disruptions expected to keep recovery slow into 2027. The hosts also cover dealer fraud-prevention tools and a New Jersey crackdown on brokered deals. On the product side, Ram is expanding its pickup lineup with a compact challenger aimed at the Maverick, while Stellantis faces plant idling and union questions. Concept reveals include the Copperhead and Wrangler Scrambler.
Arnold Gacita, president of Petra Automotive Products, talks about the growing motor oil shortage linked to the Iran war that is hitting dealerships and service centers. Ram will bring a compact pickup to challenge Ford’s Maverick in 2028. Plus, Stellantis sees opportunities for its idled Brampton plant.
