Put Up Or Shut Up

RAM’S NEW HEAVY-DUTY SHOWS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP CHASING BIG-RIG TRUCK NUMBERS

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The easiest job in the automotive industry has to be marketing pickup trucks. We’re all familiar with the ads: An oversized dually slams through a concrete wall, a voice actor in his best movie trailer baritone introduces the “all-new, more capable” Brodozer 4500 as the camera pans back showing the truck towing the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet.

This approach to advertising has trapped pickup engineers into a vicious cycle of chasing max tow and payload numbers—frankly, to the point that the added performance and capability is of little use to the average buyer. After all, once your combined truck and trailer weighs more than 26,001 pounds, legally you should be carrying a commercial driver’s license.

So what happens if you take the madmen out of the driver’s seat and let the engineers and designers focus on performance, capability, and versatility, the things that real truck buyers both want and need? You get MotorTrend’s 2020 Truck of the Year, the Ram Heavy Duty.

Advancement in Design

It’s not easy making the large and in charge form of a heavy-duty pickup attractive—let alone beautiful—but the Ram Heavy Duty handily delivers in ways no other three-quarter (2500) or one-ton (3500) pickup does. The cynic in you might be quick to dismiss the new Ram HD’s sheet metal as an 11/10ths-sized Ram 1500, but that’d be underselling all the hard work involved in designing the new Ram.

Riding on a new high-strength steel platform and available in regular, crew, and “mega” cabs with either a 6-foot-4 or 8-foot bed and single or dual rear wheels, the new Ram HD looks clean, purposeful, and modern while featuring a host of functional improvements.