How to make a right-hook Ram

Here’s a great pub-quiz teaser: what do Ram trucks have in common with the Toyota Camry?

The answer is: a big bit of plastic. The dashboard used in the right-hand drive (RHD) Ram 2500/3500 ute created by American Special Vehicles (ASV) in Clayton, Melbourne for the Australasian market is made by Socobell, which also makes dashboards for Aussie-built Camrys. It’s not unusual for different manufacturers to use the same suppliers, of course. But it does illustrate a key point about the Kiwi-market Ram: ASV describes its vehicle as a ‘‘remanufacture’’ rather than a conversion. Key components are remade in RHD by big-name OEM suppliers.

‘‘Socobell is a major story for us,’’ says ASV joint chief operating officer John DiBerardino.

‘‘They work with the number one car company in the world, making dashboards for Camry and a number of smaller plastic components for Toyota globally. The technology and quality, especially around airbag deployment, is fantastic. I couldn’t be more proud of how it’s come about.’’

The whole Ram RHD project has the thumbs-up from FCA head office in Detroit. Indeed, the Rams destined for ASV out of FCA’s factory in Mexico are built especially for us, with metric instrument clusters and UConnect infotainment systems compatible with local sat-nav and radio settings. It’s the first time Rams have been created by FCA for export outside their home region.

ASV is a joint venture between Ateco, which is the official FCA distributor for NZ, and Walkinshaw Automotive Group (WAG). It took 30,000 man hours and A$2.8 in upfront tooling to get the Ram RHD project off the ground. There’s been help from AusIndustry, which contributed to the project under its Next Generation Manufacturing Investment Programme (NGMIP).

The RHD Ram project actually had its genesis in NZ. Ateco Group has distribution rights for FCA among its interests in NZ, but Australian parent company Ateco Automotive does not (over there, the FCA distributor is factory-owned).

It was the NZ distributor agreement giving Ateco access to ‘all FCA product’ that resulted in the lightbulb moment. Negotiations started in 2013 and the first RHD trucks were delivered in late-2015.

The retail experience is also more integrated for Kiwis than Aussies: because FCA is also Ateco domain in NZ, you buy and service a Ram like any other Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep or Dodge product. All 13 Kiwi Ram dealers are FCA franchisees. That’s not the case in Australia, where some are and some aren’t and Ram is a separate business regardless.

WAG works on a number of projects for automotive brands, not all of which are in the public domain. But literally across the carpark from ASV is another WAG business that’s very highprofile: HSV.

DiBerardino stresses that one has little to do with the other, despite some shared backroom resources. Ateco came to WAG with the Ram project, not the other way around.

Of the 28 full-time employees at ASV, only three have any direct connection with HSV.

But still: it’s undeniable that WAG’s experience with lowvolume, high-quality production at HSV has come to the fore with ASV. The company has also leveraged many of its supplierconnections with HSV for the Ram project.

The Ram’s redesigned firewall pressings are made by an HSV supplier. Many of the smaller plastic components in the Ram’s RHD cabin come from Trident, the same outfit that makes HSV bumper bars. And so on.

The 10,000 square-metre ASV factory, a former Nissan Australia stamping plant, is a fascinating place full of reverseengineering. For example, the first step in the process is to remove the cab from the chassis completely, a two-hour job. The passenger cell gets lifted and wheeled away on a little trolley. Weird.

The cabs go off to a separate area to be stripped and converted, sorry remanufactured to RHD. The rest of the naked truck-with-tray is rolled down the line for the mechanical work. Chassis and cab don’t meet again until the end.