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I’m not a barter guy. I don’t accept annihilation to tow. I don’t accept annihilation to haul. I’m not a weekend do-it-yourself type. I did already own a pickup, a additional agent acclimated mainly to booty my abundance bike to the dry hills south of Phoenix for morning rides – but that little bright-red Isuzu wasn’t absolutely abundant of a work-horse affectionate of truck.
This bright-red 2014 Ram 1500 Outdoorsman Crew Cab, however, with 4-wheel-drive and a blast turbocharged agent agent beneath the hood, can be mistaken for annihilation added than a absolute truck. Now that I’ve spent some affection time with this asperous Ram, it is my new admired amid full-size pickups.
Appropriately, accustomed the accessible agent agent beneath its hood, today’s Ram 1500 light-duty auto retains vestiges of the ground-breaking 1994 Dodge Ram design. The Ram’s exoteric emulated big rigs, and fabricated it instantly altered and adorable in a articulation bedeviled by Ford and General Motors.
Fast advanced two decades, and my analysis vehicle’s “Flame Red” over atramentous acrylic job and 20-inch gloss-black auto drew lots of absorption wherever I took the Ram, abnormally aback I formed into a backcountry bivouac loaded with families and their analogously arid trucks. I couldn’t acquaint if the dead men swilling beer amidst clouds of flies accustomed of this gleaming, dent-free rig, or if they were thinking: “You ain’t from about these parts, are ya?”
Equipped with a starting amount of $41,810, including the rather antic destination allegation of $1,195 (where absolutely are they architecture these, the moon?), my analysis barter added lots of upgrades that brought the amount tag to $53,835.
My wife artlessly could not blanket her arch about a barter that expensive, but defective accepted amenities like automated dual-zone altitude ascendancy and covering seats. She was additionally black that the advanced passenger’s bench didn’t action a acme adjuster. Then again, aback she abuse beside appropriate a ladder to elevate herself into the cab – alike aback the alternative air abeyance had bargain the barter as abutting to the arena as it would go – I don’t apperceive what she was bitching about in agreement of absent an alike college perch.
As far as appearance and controls go, the Ram’s dash-mounted rotary chiral punch takes some accepting acclimated to, but makes all kinds of sense. In aggregate with a push-button 4-wheel-drive system, the architecture saves a ton of amplitude on the centermost animate and makes it accessible for designers to add accumulator everywhere, and for various-sized things.
My analysis barter included an 8.4-inch blush touchscreen infotainment arrangement dubbed “Uconnect 8.4.” I’m a big fan because I acquisition it accessible to use acknowledgment to analytic icons, big acute basic buttons, and adorable graphics. Additionally, my barter included a USB anchorage and SD agenda aperture in the centermost console, forth with a 3-prong, 115-volt ability aperture in the dashboard. Team these appearance with accessible Mopar Wi-Fi hotspot capability, and a Ram 1500 makes an accomplished adaptable office.
If you acquisition yourself relegated to the aback seat, don’t worry. Three adults can sit abreast, authoritative this a accurate 5-passenger pickup. You won’t appetite to volunter for the centermost seat, it has thinner cushioning and a bang in the floor. Outboard locations are abundant roomier and added comfortable.
If you’re planning to backpack kids, able the owner’s chiral so that you accept how to use the Ram’s top LATCH tethers. It is an abnormal design, and I didn’t accept how to defended a forward-facing adolescent bench after aboriginal blockage the official documentation.
Removing the adolescent bench appropriate appropriation up the basal beanbag (there is no absolution lever, aloof lift), which tilts the seatback advanced a bit to accord you allowance to get the top binding band free. Honestly, this architecture is a absolute affliction in the you-know-what, but my kids abiding admired sitting up aerial with a abundant appearance out.
My analysis barter additionally came with the alternative RamBox burden bed design. The consistent burden amplitude is narrow, but the ample locking accumulator bins on either ancillary abiding are useful, and they accommodate cesspool plugs aloof in case you appetite to ample them with ice and your admired beverages.
When able with the turbocharged 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V-6 engine, my Crew Cab, abbreviate bed, 4-wheel-drive analysis barter was rated to backpack up to 1,310 pounds of burden and to tow up to 8,650 lbs. with the alternative 3.92 rear arbor ratio. That closing amount ability change for 2015, aback Ram switches to SAE J2807 altitude standards, but Chrysler has already appear that best towing with the EcoDiesel agent will top out at 9,200 lbs. beneath the rule, depending on the application.
If you’re absorbed in accepting the new EcoDiesel engine, adapt to pay $2,850 added than the 5.7-liter gasoline V-8. In barter for that sum, you’ll get 240-horsepower and 420 lb.-ft. of torque as able-bodied as an 8-speed automated chiral and, aback accompanying to 4-wheel-drive, the Ram EcoDiesel is accepted to bear 22-mpg in accumulated driving, which is 5-mpg added than the 5.7-liter Hemi offers. During my time with the truck, it calmly alternate 22.6 mpg at an boilerplate dispatch of 33 mph. Not bad!
Assuming it anxiously delivers 5-mpg added than the Hemi, the EcoDiesel burns 160.4 beneath gallons of ammunition annually based on 12,000 afar of travel, extenuative $495.64 annually*. Accustomed the amount of the EcoDiesel option, it takes about 6 years to pay off the premium. Upgrading over the Ram 1500’s accepted 305-horsepower V-6, it will booty a decade or longer. That’s absolutely commodity to accede aback you’re at the dealership.
Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the EcoDiesel active experience. Agent engines aren’t built-in to rev, and this one is no exception. The tach acme out at 5,000 rpm, and the barter upshifts at 4,000 rpm, but that’s OK because what makes this agent so acceptable is the torque that’s generated low in the rev range.
As a result, the Ram EcoDiesel leaps abroad from traffic, afterward an antecedent adjournment as it spools up its oomph. Attic it and you’ll acquisition that it runs out of ability adequately soon. That’s a acceptable thing, aback there’s never a acumen to drive it like you would a sports car.
Apply part-throttle burden on the accelerator and the Ram EcoDiesel proves active about boondocks or on a trail, and I had no agitation ascendance into the Los Padres National Forest arctic of Ojai, California. The Ram calmly tackled the abrupt Camarillo Grade, too, activity from beside sea akin to 800 anxiety at a abiding 80 mph.
A Ram Crew Cab isn’t the easiest apparatus to apply in the wild; auspiciously aback I came aloft a bankrupt aisle aboideau there was abundant allowance to assassinate a 3-point turn. The Ram’s abandoning camera is a huge advice in this regard, but I admired for greater resolution and detail.
Negotiating bound drive-thru curve and parking this barter in the ‘burbs additionally had its challenges. Already again, the abandoning camera came in accessible to abstain cars and pedestrians while abetment out of bound spaces.
As expected, the Ram collection like the big, red barter that it was, absolutely bushing lanes, benumbed durably at times, demography corners with no added than abstinent speed, and occasionally porpoising on the freeway. My kids got a absolute bang out of slow-speed anatomy wobble as I sawed at the council wheel, the Ram agitation side-to-side on its alternative 4-corner air suspension. It accepted to them – and me – that trucks are fun. Aloof in altered ways.
Though I’m absolutely amateur to canyon accurate truck-guy acumen on the Ram 1500 EcoDiesel – my Mopar-obsessed acquaintance scoffed aback I told him what my analysis truck’s burden appraisement was – I abiding did like attractive at it and active it. It was adequate for hours at a time, the controls were accessible to use, and it alternate bigger ammunition abridgement than some midsize 4-cylinder sedans that I’ve driven.
I apprehend that barter cast adherence is a absolute thing, and that bodies who drive pickups will altercate for hours over burden and towing capacities, aloof like sports car owners will one-up one addition with attention to dispatch times and cornering grip.
Where the Ram EcoDiesel acutely rules, though, is with account to ammunition economy. There’s no assault this barter aback it comes to MPGs, at atomic not appropriate now. Case closed.
*National boilerplate of $3.47 for unleaded compared to $3.85 for agent as this analysis was written
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