Robert Patton, Andy Mikonis, and myself were recently invited to a media event where we would be able to drive the new 2010 Dodge Ram HD trucks both on public roads and at the Chrysler proving grounds.  Robert and Andy's comments will be in an upcoming magazine.

The event started with about a 1 hour briefing in a tent in Ypsilanti.  I took video of the majority of this briefing and you can view it here:

One of the biggest pieces of news is that the drive train is a carry over from 2009.  As we have previously reported the 6.7L Cummins engine met the 2010 emissions standard back in 2007.  In talks with the engineers in attendance they stated that the early issues they had with the emissions system have been worked out and that in talking with technicians at dealerships they say it's now a non issue.  Ford has had to come out with a totally new in house diesel engine and GM has had to make drastic changes to theirs.  Both GM and Ford are going to have to go to urea injection systems to meet the new emissions.  The 6.7L Cummins in the 2500 and 3500 trucks will not need urea injection although the chassis cab models will.

After the briefing we had a chance to drive the trucks for 2 hours up to the proving grounds.  They had a fleet of trucks available for us to choose from spanning the model line.  Robert and I chose a 3500 Crew Cab 4x4 long bed dually with the Laramie interior.  This was a fully loaded truck which we chose to be able to get to know the newest features. 

I have had limited time driving the 3rd generation trucks as I personally still own a 2nd generation 98 2500.  Honestly, I wasn't all that impressed by the 3rd generation trucks.  The body panels seemed very plain to me missing the bulges and contours of the 2nd gen.  The interior struck me as very "mini-van" like.  I didn't have any desire to have one over my 2nd gen.  This new truck is a different story entirely!!  The exterior of the truck is much improved over the 3rd gen with many more compound shapes on the rockers, bed sides, etc.  The dually fender sides are one piece stampings - no more tacked on fenders.  The new bed sides look great; the only concern being the cost of repair when they inevitably get taken out at the bank teller drive thru.  My first reaction to the new trucks in pictures was that it wasn't all that different from the 3rd gen.  Pictures don't do it justice.  In person it is a drastically different truck.  Also, many of the paint colors have a lot of pearl in them which also doesn't come across in pictures.  You need to get down to your local dealer and check these trucks out in person, I'm sure you'll like what you see.  Speaking of that they should be arriving in dealers in the next couple of weeks.

The truck that we drove had a center console that extends all the way up to the dash.  Also available is a 40/20/40 that opens up the area between the seat and the dash.  They didn't have any of these on hand so I wasn't able to check it out but I'm pretty sure that I would prefer that seating arrangement.  Having the console filling that area makes the cockpit seem smaller to me and I prefer more open space.  That said, the seats of this truck were extremely comfortable with good bolsters on the back and the seat bottom that held you in place but weren't obtrusive.  This truck was also equipped with the heated and cooled (ventilated) seats.  It was about 60 degrees the day we drove it so I didn't test out the heat (Robert did and liked it) but I did use the cooling and loved it.  It also had adjustable foot pedals which I kept all the way to the firewall (I'm 6 foot tall). 

The quality of the materials in the interior are vastly improved from the 3rd gen.  The dash is a soft touch material (leather like) with stitching at the front top edge.  The entire interior looks and feels like a high end luxury car.  There are two glove boxes in the dash for storage as well as smaller cubby holes all over the place.  All of the controls were well placed and very easy to figure out.  I felt right at home immediately.  The in dash nav/entertainment unit seemed very intuitive, and although I wasn't completely comfortable with it in our short time with the truck, I'm sure within a week I'd have all of it's features down pat.  The nav unit has a USB port as well as an I-pod connection in the upper glove box and a built in hard drive for storing music.  The only issue I could see is that the USB port is behind a pop out door that is attached with plastic straps that I expect will break before the truck is retired.  Our truck was also equipped with a back up camera which displays on the screen on the nav unit and gives an incredible view out the back of the truck.  It's a very wide angle lens and I was amazed at what you could see in it - more to follow on that later during the tow test.  For power ports there was a 12v plug as well as a 110 AC plug in the dash.  The 110 plug does not have a ground plug which I think is an unfortunate oversight.  The interior alone is enough of an upgrade to make me want to retire my 2nd gen to toy status and have this new truck as my daily driver!

Driving down the road the first impression was the incredibly smooth ride.  Usually a 1 ton dually will rattle your teeth out of your head unloaded but this truck drove smoother than my 3/4 ton!  Our truck was equipped with the 6 speed automatic as were all of the trucks available to drive.  I prefer manual transmissions but amazingly I didn't have any issues with the automatic at all - it was seamless which says a lot!  There is a manual mode you can put the transmission into where you can set the maximum gear you want it to use.  As with all of the 6.7L engines an exhaust brake is built in and comparing it to the BD exhaust brake in my '98, I'd say it has about 95% of the stopping ability; that is a Ram exclusive feature that would cost you over $1,000 to add to the competitors' trucks.  As expected the power is impressive and plenty for 95% of the people out there.  Mileage on our drive of mostly back roads with a small amount of highway travel was in the mid 15's according to the in dash EVIC display.  On the trip back from the proving grounds driving all freeway at 75 mph was in the mid 16's.  The towing mirrors were great in both positions with the convex mirror giving a great view of the blind spot.  This truck was also equipped with a power sliding rear window which is a great addition.

When we arrived at the proving grounds, we found that they had two trailers for us to tow, a 38 foot bumper pull travel trailer that weighed 8,800 lbs and a gooseneck trailer with a 4wd tractor on it weighing 16,500.  They also had a 1 ton regular cab that had a large round bale of hay in the bed.  Also present were a 3/4 ton 4wd short bed crew cab Chevy and a 1 ton crew cab dually Ford for comparison drives.  When one of the trucks was being switched out on the travel trailer, I hopped in the truck and took a video of the back up camera as they were hitching to the truck.  You can actually see the ball in the camera and can easily back right up to the trailer, hop out and hook up.  You can watch the video here:

I towed both trailers and what I found very interesting was by the seat of the pants I really couldn't tell a difference between towing 8,800 lbs or 16,500 lbs having driven them back to back.  The exhaust brake was able to slow down both loads very well and I have no doubt would be able to easily control the speed of the truck coming down any grades on regular highways without using the trucks brakes.  I also spent time testing the integrated brake controller.  It has a sensor built in that adjusts the amount of braking based on how hard you are braking.  You can also set the level of braking that you wish to have and there is a manual activation as well.  The trailer brake setting is displayed right in the center of the dash display in the EVIC.  I tested the brake controller with both hard stops and soft stops.  I also tried it at very slow speeds such as what you experience in stop and go traffic and the sensor worked great with none of the hard activation that you commonly get.  It is the best brake controller I've ever used.

I also drove the Chevy and Ford for comparative purposes and by the seat of the pants the Chevy felt quicker in acceleration unloaded, the Ford slower.  I had them hook the Chevy up to the 8,800 lb travel trailer to compare towing performance and the story was the opposite with the Dodge feeling quicker.  Keep in mind that these were '09 model competitors trucks as their new trucks aren't available yet.

I also drove many different configurations of the trucks unloaded on their rough test road.  This road consists of a number of different surfaces from sine wave ripples to extremely rough road.  Amazingly I couldn't tell any difference in ride quality on any of the trucks.  The engineers said that they had retuned the springs on all of the different configurations to optimize the ride, and they weren't kidding.  I could have literally closed my eyes and not been able to tell whether I was in a 1 ton dually long bed or a 3/4 ton short bed.  The Ford dually was rougher in this test.  The Chevy rode better on the smaller imperfections but when the road got really rough the Chevy got into it's bump stops and the ride got a lot worse.

There was also an opportunity to drive the Power Wagon on their off road trail, but since you can't get a diesel in them and our members are diesel nuts, I focused my efforts on the diesels and didn't have time to get over there for that test.

Pricing information was also released at this event and pricing is reduced on all models from those they replaced.  The basic 2500 regular cab long bed ST 2wd starts at $28,165 which is $1,970 lower than the 2009 model it replaces.  A 2500 crew cab short box SLT 4wd starts at $39,430 which is $40 less than the 2009 model it replaces.  Official press releases and Dodge photo gallery are linked below.

Overall I think Dodge has an excellent package in these new trucks.  They are improved enough that I can easily see one replacing my '98 which I couldn't say about the previous generation.  Make sure to get down to your Dodge dealer and check these trucks out; I'm sure you'll be as impressed as I was!

Photo Gallery

Official Pricing Press Release