All-new Ram is Car and Driver’s top pickup

Posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 3:32 PM EST.

Car and Driver magazine just completed a comparison test of the three top-selling pickup trucks on the market today, and the all-new 2009 Dodge Ram won hands down.

In a nine-page article in the March issue titled, “Truckin’ Through the Apocalypse,” editors pegged the all-new Ram a notch above its long-time rivals—the new 2009 Ford F-150 and the Chevy Silverado. By its scoring and tests, the Ram bettered the F-150 and Silverado, 212 to 205 and 204, respectively, across 25 criteria.

Editor Tony Swan said, “Research tells product planners that pickup buyers like chrome surfaces on the fronts of their trucks. If that’s true, the latest Ram is likely to seduce potential customers at first sight. There’s enough bright stuff—chrome-plated plastic—on the front of this bad boy to make it visible on Google Earth.”

Swan went on to say: “We gave the Ram top styling marks. There was some concern about how the two-tone paint job would be perceived in Texas—perhaps a little fancy for cowboy country—but we liked it, and the forward-canted grille is a welcome change from decades of bows whose designs seem to have been inspired by Great Lakes iron-ore freighters.”

Swan said the double-decked glove box “is the only useful glove box in the group, almost every small storage nook in the cab has a rubber liner to damp out rattles, the dashboard sports a 115-volt outlet, and though the rear cabin still has a driveline tunnel down the middle, it also has a pair of fairly deep under-floor storage wells and two storage bins under the seat.”

Car and Driver editors were impressed with the all-new Ram Box™ they called “a big plus.” “They measure 57 inches long by 10 inches wide, with a lot of space under each cover. And there’s still enough width between the rails for your four-by-eight sheet of whatever.”

But the bigger deal, they said, was beneath the cargo bed. “Although the Ram retains a traditional live axle, it has forsaken traditional leaf springs for a coil-spring setup.” The result, they said, the “ride quality is distinctly superior to the Ram’s rivals, particularly in the dirt.”

Finally, Swan note that although the Ram was only 40 pounds lighter than the F-150, it was quicker than either of its rivals because of the 390-hp HEMI® under the hood and a 3.55:1 rear end. “The thrust of that engine and the sounds that go with it are hard to resist,” Swan wrote. “Add that to a solid platform and innovative design, and you have a winner. Our Pat Bedard went so far as to call it a ‘breakthrough truck.’ He didn’t get much argument.”

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 3:32 PM EST and is filed under Company. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.