Months in Fleet: Six
Mileage to Date: 25,114
We've got a race on our hands. The 2009 Dodge ram 1500 and 2009 BMW 750Li are engaged in a bit of a battle to rack up the most Four Seasons mileage. The BMW arrived in our test fleet before the Dodge, but also spent an entire month out of service due to a body shop visit. Our Ram is quickly racking up the miles - more than 5000 in the last month alone! - and continues to prove Four Seasons vehicles create demand by being versatile.
As our last update highlighted, the Ram is getting tons of praise for the well screwed together interior. With more than 25,000 miles on the odometer, we still haven't noticed any signs of wear. To make sure our minds haven't been playing tricks on us, we borrowed a brand new 2010 Dodge Ram for comparison purposes. Here's what executive editor Joe DeMatio had to say after driving the trucks back-to-back: "The day after I drove the Four Seasons Ram on a 350-mile round trip to West Branch, I drove another, nearly identically equipped, Ram Crew Cab, with only about 2700 miles on it. And the two vehicles felt pretty much identical. The new Ram was not tighter, or quieter, or smoother, or more of a piece than our Four Seasons Ram." This is a huge improvement over our 2008 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, which suffered economy-car plastics dressed up with faux wood trim.
But trucks aren't really about the interior. The nicest leathers in the world won't help you sell trucks if they can't tow, haul, and get dirty. I tested all of those functions using the Ram as a tow vehicle for my 24 Hours of LeMons team during the October race at Nelson Ledges road course. Towing our race car to the track posed no problem whatsoever for the Ram. It would probably be better for trailer towing if Dodge had upgraded to a six-speed auto, as Ford, GM, and Toyota have done for half-ton trucks, but around here, I'd rather have the five-speed automatic and the coil-sprung rear suspension than a six-speed and leaf springs. Perhaps I'd have a different opinion if there were more severe hills near Ann Arbor and I did more towing.
It seems the trailer brake controller is the only legitimate truck feature missing from our test vehicle. It's interesting that only a few years ago all trailer brake controllers were aftermarket equipment until Ford integrated a factory unit in its 2008 Super Duty trucks. Now, only two model years later, a truck without a factory-installed brake controller option might as well have an unsynchronized three-speed manual transmission. That's how fast every segment in the market changes these days. ...next page >>