SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.-Dust flew and the back end kicked loose in a nicely controlled little side step when I punched the throttle on the 2019 Ram Rebel as we scrambled through the soft sand of a High Sonoran Desert Wadi.
Through a tight right over a sharp rise, and then screaming down a moderately straight stretch punctuated by sippy holes, the truck bounded across the desert floor as happily as Tigger greeting a new day.
That familiar and unmistakably sweet roar of a wide-open, 410-hp, 5.7-Liter HEMI V-8 was accompanied by a new feeling, a sense of confidence born of a completely redesigned truck chassis that is lighter, stronger, better balanced and more competent than the architecture that has lifted Ram sales 70 percent the last six years and, in recent months, let Ram ease past Silverado into second place on the sales charts.
Bad news, Chevy. The all-new Ram is not a better pickup. It's a lot better. Monumentally better. Safer. More technologically innovative. More comfortable. More attractive. More capable. Stronger.
I would say that even if I had not been among the scores of journalists from across the planet whom Ram flew to Arizona and housed at the five-star Boulders resort to showcase a truck that right now is being shipped to dealers across the planet.
Clean-sheet engineering
It all starts with the chassis, where Ram's engineers paid attention to a whole lot of detail and incorporated 40 new technology features.
The big headline is a 400-percent increase in high-strength and ultra-high-strength steel to make the new Ram stronger but lighter, which increases payload and towing capacity and improves fuel efficiency.
The new foundation is also markedly safer in at least two ways. The door ring, the last line of defense in a side collision, is all ultra-high-strength steel. The frame rail fronts are splayed 23 degrees outwards to improve energy absorption in a frontal collision. Further protection comes from boxed steel appendices behind the front wheel assemblies that capture energy and transfer it down the rails and outward, instead of into the firewall.
A full suite of safety technologies, shown to reduce injuries and fatalities by a third, according to insurance industry data, is available. However, if you want dynamic cruise control, frontal collision avoidance and lane-keep assist, you will have to climb the model tree and order additional packages.
That raises the cost to consumers by $5,000 or more, which is a high price to pay for technology that Toyota makes free with every truck or car it builds. On the other hand, with the introduction of the new Ram, Toyota's light-duty pickup is now three generations out of date, so you get what you pay for.
Ram steps ahead of the field with its blind-spot monitoring and camera system in a couple of ways. The blind spot system detects when a trailer is in tow and shifts its monitoring to the rear of the trailer.
Using a combination of a rear back-up camera and the truck's leveling system, a driver can single- handedly maneuver a tow hitch over trailer ball and lower the truck onto it. That's impressive to see.
Noise, vibration and harshness are aggressively managed in multiple ways. Hydraulic body mounts mitigate vibration and body sway. Vibration cancellation canisters halt the transmission of engine harshness.
Throughout the truck, body gap tolerances were decreased or baffles were used to eliminate wind noise. Inside the cabin, overhead microphones pick up road noise and the sound system emits canceling sound waves.
All-new frequency response damping shocks improve ride and handling, while bigger discs and calipers front and rear improve stopping power.
A looker
Dodge first started building trucks for the Army during World War I, and the new Ram is the 15th generation of the family and sports a decidedly 21st century look.
Gone is all but a hint of the big-rig, drop-fender front end that surrounded a crosshair grille. Thanks to another Dodge/Ram design cue, the power-dome hood, the look is still there, but in a much softer voice.
From a cleaner, more sophisticated grille to a lighter, dampened tailgate, the new Ram has cleaner lines resulting in a 0.357 drag coefficient, sleekest in the segment and seems to whisper "precision" from every angle.
A unified front-end wrapper flows into a consistent beltline, achieved by raising the top of the bed by 35 mm to meet the line that runs from the top of the fender through the bottom of the windows. The A-line, the outer bulge that runs from the fenders through the middle of the doors and the middle of the bed, is also straight as an arrow.
With such precise lines, fit and finish better be spot-on and it is, even in the preproduction models we rag-tag journalists took out into the desert and abused.
Best. Cabin. Ever.
Form and function enter a happy marriage in the redesign of the interior in a line of trucks that has set the bar for cabin comfort and convenience since Dodge pickups became Ram eight years ago.
The headline goes to an available 12-inch, high-resolution, deep-color touch display which, fortunately, retains Ram's easy-to-use software, allowing drivers to drill deeper into useful features. The screen has been moved rearwards into the driver's reach zone.
The list of improvements is long: better seats, elimination of the rear floor tunnel, a crew cab that is four inches longer for more legroom, slimmer door panels to increase hip room, reclining and heated rear seats, more leather, more stitching, more real wood.
A massive center console has twice the volume of Chevy and Ford. Five Type C USB ports help keep everybody's devices charged up.
Acoustic glass and active noise cancellation help make the cabin quieter, but an available, 19-speaker, 900-watt Harmon-Kardon sound system might make it louder. Also available is Sirius XM 360, an online library that mimics the software of streaming music vendors like Spotify to learn listening habits and build playlists.
Incidentally, we found the standard sound system to be quite enjoyable.
Flow through the heating and cooling system is 30 percent greater than before.
Hybrid soon
Most likely the new Ram will also be markedly faster off the line and more fuel efficient, but we won't know for a while. One of the new Ram's most attractive selling points, a light hybridization system, will not be in the first wave of trucks.
Company officials declined to offer a precise timetable, saying only that this will be a "cadenced" rollout. Our best guess is that means Ram intends to use up its existing supply of motors before sending in the varsity, but that's only our guess.
However that works out, Fiat Chrysler's eTorque system is clever. It replaces the alternator with a belt-driven motor/generator that feeds energy to a small 48-volt lithium-ion battery pack. It also draws power from regenerative braking. The system powers the truck's start-stop system, which will seamlessly turn off and restart the truck at stop lights. So long Chrysler starter whine.
More importantly, it will provide a brief torque boost of 90 lb-ft to V-6 Rams and 130 lb-ft to V-8 models. That's critical because it comes when torque is most needed to get a vehicle under way. That also happens to be the period of greatest fuel consumption Newton's first law, inertia so the effect on fuel economy ought to be statistically significant.
Fuel economy data is not yet available on 2019 Rams, but it should also see improvement thanks to a new generation of TorqueFlite eight-speed automatic transmissions with more powerful control computers.
The hybrid system will be standard on V-6 models. It's a $1,995 option on HEMI engines, an investment likely to pay for itself in three key ways: better towing, fuel savings across the life of the vehicle and smoother operation. For example, the system supplements the V-8's cylinder deactivation system to level torque flow.
The absence of eTorque on early models forces us to give a qualified buy rating on the new Ram.
Yes, the new pickup is lovely, has the best interiors in the segment and has the quietest ride on the road; but it is also more expensive than its predecessor.
The base work truck, A V-6 Tradesman 4x2, starts at $31,695, plus a $1,645 destination fee. A LWB 4x4 Crewcab Limited starts at $57,690, before option packages. We worry if early adopters might see lowered resale values with an incomplete driveline.
The smartest configuration in the lineup, Ram's Ecodiesel, is promised for the 2019 calendar year.
Bottom line: The smallest and most fiscally vulnerable of the Big Three, Fiat-Chrysler needs the new Ram to be a homerun. When all the engines are sorted, it may well be.