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The short answer is an easy one. The Dodge Hornet is gone. Dodge confirmed in January 2026 that Hornet production has ended permanently after the 2025 model year, killed by import tariffs on its Italian-built platform. Plenty of 2025 Hornets (and some carry-over 2024 units) are still sitting on lots across the country, including here in the Panhandle, so it's still a real purchase decision. But you need to know you're buying a discontinued model. The 2026 Honda CR-V, meanwhile, is fully current and actively updated.

Walk into any auto parts store in Panama City and you'll find a wall of washer fluids. Blue jugs, orange jugs, green jugs, summer formulas, all-season formulas, de-icer blends rated to -35 degrees F. Half that shelf exists for climates that Florida Panhandle drivers will never actually need. The question worth asking isn't which fluid is "best" in some universal sense. The one that matters is which handles what actually hits your windshield here (love bugs twice a year and afternoon thunderstorms seemingly every other day from May through September).

Pull up to St. Andrews State Park with a kayak, two rods, a cooler, and a bag of wet gear, and the way your Ram 1500 is set up decides whether you spend five minutes unloading or twenty. The right storage keeps your gear sorted, protected from salt air and afternoon rain, and locked while you're in the water. For Panama City Beach buyers, the RamBox Cargo Management System is the single most useful bed storage option the 2026 Ram 1500 offers (but it's not the right call for every rig or every type of haul). We rank…

Gulf Coast ownership is harder on a vehicle than Panama City Beach is on a beach umbrella. Salt air travels up to 20 miles inland from the Gulf, and Bay County logs an average of 75 thunderstorm days per year, per the National Weather Service. We don't mean that as a complaint. Treat it as a used-SUV inspection checklist instead.

The needle creeps toward the red. Maybe a faint sweet smell drifts through your vents. Maybe a yellow warning light flicks on near the Hathaway Bridge approach, right when you're stuck three cars back from a stopped tourist convoy on Front Beach Road.

July in Panama City, FL runs relentless. The heat index routinely hits 102F, the humidity hovers around 74%, and if you're stuck on US-98 in afternoon tourist traffic with the AC fighting that kind of ambient load, your 2026 Dodge Charger's engine is working harder than the spec sheet implies. The SIXPACK Hurricane I6 is a well-engineered engine, and that part is the good news. The trouble is the split oil specification between the R/T and the Scat Pack, something plenty of generic maintenance guides miss entirely. 

Cracking the windows barely helps, and parking in the shade doesn't do much either. Both facts catch a lot of parents off guard. On a typical Panama City July afternoon (where AccuWeather shows highs running 88 to 93 degrees and the heat index pushing past 102 degrees), a car's interior can jump roughly 20 degrees in the first ten minutes alone, per NHTSA. The numbers don't leave room to argue.

For this specific drive, the gas Pacifica wins. On a 265-mile highway haul in late July, the plug-in hybrid burns through its 32 miles of electric range before you've cleared Bay County, and the highway fuel economy gap between the two narrows enough that the practical edge shifts firmly to the standard V6.

Pull out of Bay Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram on West 15th Street and you're already sitting between downtown Panama City and the St. Andrews waterfront district. The best lunch stops all fall within a 10-to-15-minute drive. Stop at Hunt's Oyster Bar, Uncle Ernie's Bayfront Grill, or Finn's Island Style Grub, and you've got a real midday route that also puts the vehicle through its paces on actual Panama City streets.

Two days on St. Andrews Bay, one 2026 Ram 1500 that actually fits the boat you own. You leave town Friday evening, hit the first ramp at first light Saturday, work the bay and the nearshore reefs, and get home Sunday with a cooler worth bragging about, if the bite cooperates. No guesswork on whether your truck can handle the load. No scrambling for ramp parking at 5:45 a.m. when half of Bay County had the same idea.