Ram 2500 Power Wagon a beast, on-road and off

You want a monster Hemi V-8-powered, stumppulling Ram 1500 pickup truck? You wimp.

Real men and women drive Ram 2500 Power Wagons.

The heavy-duty version of Ram’s light-duty truck that arrived in my driveway could pull my house off its foundation — assuming I can get in it. I walked out into my driveway and looked up.

Dressed entirely in black and an alleged 6-foot-7 tall (it seemed taller than that next to my mere 6-foot-5 frame), the Power Wagon loomed over me with a face that would make Thanos flinch. It’s a beast. I think the designers took their inspiration from a humpback whale swallowing an ocean of krill.

I stepped up on the

The 2020 Ram 2500 Power Wagon features 33-inch tires.

rocker rail, then hoisted myself into the passenger seat with the A-pillar handle. On the passenger side, the 5-foot-5 Mrs. Payne needed our roof ladder to get in.

The 2500 reminded me of an older off-road Ram pickup — mega-modified with five-inch suspension lift and 38-inch tires — that dragged our Jeep Wrangler

out of a ditch at the Mounds off-road park a few years back. But this beast doesn’t need aftermarket mods.

The Power Wagon comes from the manufacturer fully equipped to take on the outback. That’s the badge’s calling card, having carved out a new heavyduty segment above and beyond famed light-duty performance trucks like the Ford Raptor, Chevy Silverado Z71 and sibling Ram Rebel. When a hammer isn’t enough, the Power Wagon offers a sledgehammer.

Ram’s crosstown rivals have followed suit with their own truncheons, the GMC Sierra AT4 and the Ford Super Duty Tremor.

The Power Wagon

stands tall with massive

33-inch Goodyear Wrangler DuraTrac tires inside swollen fender wells. They add additional ground clearance over the usual

30-inchers for a total of 14.2 inches. Armed with armadillo-like skid plates, the Power Wagon has a ridiculous front approach angle of 29 degrees (the iconic Jeep Wrangler Rubicon is

33) and is rated for wading through 30 inches of water.

Power Wagon is a truck nerd’s dream. Behold the twin locking-differentials, like a Jeep Rubicon’s.

There’s a separate floormounted four-wheel-drive transfer case for low-speed rock crawling. And for when the going really gets tough, the 2500 adds an extra link to its upper axle mount — call it Articulink — which combines with electronically disconnecting front anti-roll bars to give the monster 26 inches of front-wheel articulation for crawling over rocks. Dude!

But the real show is inside, where Ram sports the best interior in truckdom. As in a Tesla, the cabin is oriented around a 12-inch vertical screen that communicated the cabin’s larger refinement. Gears are accessed not by a steering-mounted stalk, but by a space-saving rotary dial. Back seats are huge — Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain could play a comfortable game of cards back there.

RAM/FCA