Petrol V8 Ram fuel for thought
David Linklater.
Ram’s Hemi petrol V8 1500 truck looks down on high-end utes from Ford and Volkswagen, writes
There are pickup trucks, and then there are pickup trucks. If you want to make a Ford Ranger or Toyota Hilux cower at the traffic lights, you need something like a Ram.
Yes, the Ram range goes down in 1000-unit steps: there’s the 3500 at the top, the 2500 we’re most familiar with and the latest ‘‘remanufactured’’ right-handdrive model to come out of American Special Vehicles in Melbourne, the 1500.
The designations are historical and used to refer to carrying capacity, but they don’t mean anything these days – except to indicate that one model is more heavy duty than the other.
In fact, the 2500 is branded Heavy Duty thanks to its 6989kg towing capacity (as long as you have a ‘‘pintle’’ towbar). The more everyday 1500 tows just 4500kg, which is still around a tonne more than your average pickup truck. Not a bad tradeoff for a $50k saving in purchase price.
Well, kind of. The flagship 1500 Laramie featured here actually has the same full-size ‘‘crew cab’’ as the larger 2500 models. It’s very high and very wide: close enough to
2 metres each way, so if you’re looking at it head-on it’s essentially a massive square box.
The 1500 does have a shorter tray, but the vehicle is still over
5.8m long – and a mere 210mm shorter than the 2500.
These American pickup trucks are more about towing than payload. The 1500 can carry up to
800kg on the tray, which means it’s well outdone by the traditional (and much smaller) ‘‘one tonne’’ pickup crowd like Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux.
Well, it depends what you want to do with it. The Ram range allows business users to tow stuff well out of the scope of the classic Kiwi pickup, but without moving away from a lifestyle vehicle to something much more commercial.
No, it’s probably not the ideal thing for city driving, especially if you ever need to park.
But horses for courses. It’s great for horse floats, by the way.
That’s the rational argument. The emotional side is that there’s an enthusiastic following for this kind of big, American chromeladen truck.
Even the one-tonne market is all about one-upmanship and something of the Ram’s size and presence ups them all.
If you believe that space equals luxury, there’s a lot of appeal in the Ram’s cabin because it is absolutely massive front and rear. It has to be enjoyed somewhat ironically, because it’s quite retrolooking and the materials are pretty average in places. But the build quality is excellent: ASV does an outstanding job of making these trucks right-hand drive and given that they’re essentially handassembled, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re much better made than the factory stuff.
Given the modest payload and the large size of the tray, the brilliant $5000 RamBox is a musthave.
It puts an integrated drainable storage box on each side of the tray
(210 litres in total), both locking and unlocking with the vehicle’s remote. It’s a great secure space for small bags and the grocery run. You can, ahem, get a custom gun rack for the RamBox in the United States, but you probably guessed that already.
The RamBox setup also comes with a trifold tonneau cover, cargo bed extender, rails and lighting. It’s money well spent.
The unique selling proposition for the Ram 1500 is of course its
5.7-litre petrol V8 engine. Yes, the
V8 ‘‘ute’’ is back for New Zealand.
It’s not that bad, actually. Urban running kills it, of course, like any large vehicle with a large engine: expect 20 litres per 100km. But in 500km of driving I got 13.5l/100km out of the Ram 1500, thanks to a fair bit of open-road driving.
The big petrol V8 sounds awesome (and you can make it even more so with the $4370 Mopar exhaust system), but it’s also supremely unstressed at 100kmh. The eight-speed automatic is smooth too.
Handling? It has some and there’s a good switchable all-wheeldrive system to handle the loose stuff. But it’s not a vehicle you feel like you have to hurry in any way. Cruise and enjoy.
The Ram 1500 is unique in the Kiwi market for its combination of USstyle pickup-truck size and V8 petrol power.
But given that some high-end
1-tonne utes are climbing up towards $90k and buyers are not shy about adding further cost through options, it’s not out of the question that the Ram 1500 could tempt them a little higher up the price and size scale. Especially when you can get the smaller ‘‘quad cab’’ Ram 1500 model for just
$89,990.