Ram’s got a truck that jingle jangle jingles

Published: Mar 9, 2013 7:00 a.m. ET


Oh, honey. Aren’t you the big stud.



Dan Neil for The Wall Street Journal
2013 Dodge Ram Laramie Longhorn.

Can we delve into this “Longhorn Edition” thing? A Western/rancher-themed upholstery-and-trim package for the Ram 1500 truck, the Laramie Longhorn package takes personal obliviousness to new heights. Saddle-embroidered leather seats, saddlebaglike storage pouches in the back, unvarnished wood, the kind of filigreed metal engraving you find on my mother’s .38 Colt revolver—you would have to be the emptiest Stetson on earth to actually buy one of these things. Do you insist people call you “Tex,” even though you’re from Connecticut? Are you the cowboy from the Village People? Explain yourself, man.

The analog to the Laramie Longhorn package is the Nudie suit, one of those bedazzling country-and-western costumes made by tailor-to-the-stars Nudie Cohn. Sitting in the Laramie Longhorn feels distinctly like having been devoured by Conway Twitty.

Now, as for which of the American full-size trucks one should buy—Chevy, Ford or this freshly redesigned Ram—honestly, I’ve sort of lost count. These three companies’ pickups are all amazing machines, each with a long list of sedanlike amenities to go with their heavy-lift capacity. Each is outrageously civilized and quiet, considering. Dimensionally, in price and performance, these trucks are each within whiskers of one another.

Indeed, I see in the Laramie Longhorn edition a sort of desperate casting about for differentiation in a segment (personal-use half-ton) that is harrowingly close and competitive. Ram: We’ll build a truck for just about anybody.

By the way: A ram is a sheep and a longhorn is a cow. I don’t suppose that bothers anybody.

As for the Asian-nameplate full-sizers—Toyota Tundra, Nissan Titan—I continue to score them as just a shade off the American brands, though I recognize they have their advocates. Setting aside reliability—which U.S.-nameplate trucks have largely neutralized as an issue, anyway—Detroit’s trucks feel better-rounded and more thought-through. Detroit throws everything it’s got into the pickup segment, and it shows.

If you ever wondered what a $55,630 half-ton pickup truck would look like, here it is. Our tester was the maximum specification: crew cab (125.3-cubic-foot cabin); full-time, dual-speed 4x4; 5.7-liter Hemi V8; eight-speed transmission. This thing has load-compensating, ride-height adjustable air suspension. It has heated rear seats and lockable storage compartments built into the cargo bed walls. It has 20-inch chrome wheels with gold accents and a mirrored chrome grille you can see from Tycho’s rim.

This is how ridiculous it gets: Our tester had skid plates for the front differential and transfer case—which would protect these components in severe, rock-crawling conditions—and perilously exposed chrome wheel-to-wheel step bars. You could scrub those off in a McDonald’s drive-through.

With the Laramie Longhorn Crew Cab 4x4, we are at the extreme right of the price bell curve, and it’s illustrative of just how much range is required of auto makers’ half-ton offerings. The Ram 1500 Tradesman 4x2, the base model, bared-boned with a 310-horsepower, 4.7-liter V8 and automatic transmission, costs a mere $22,640. From there, the Ram truck climbs through $30,000 in optional equipment and no fewer than 10 trim levels, including: Lone Star, Big Horn, Outdoorsman. Grrr!

Finally, at the top of Ram Man Mountain, is the Longhorn, which is essentially the boss’s truck, a luxury executive pickup. By the way, Ford pioneered the micro-segmentation of pickups (V6 or V8; 4x2 and 4x4; short-, mid- or long-bed; club or crew cab; hot and streety or seriously off-road, e.g., the F150 SVT Raptor). The Ford lineup has its own rough-and-ready saddle bum, the F150 King Ranch Edition. It’s like all the focus-group members arrived riding cows.

The top-line news for the Ram 1500 is the option of a four-valve, 305-hp 3.6-liter V6 (269 pound-feet at 4,175 rpm) that returns best-in-class fuel economy of 17/25 miles per gallon, city/highway. That’s 20% better than the previous 3.7-liter V6, in part owing to the new eight-speed automatic transmission. The Ram’s gearshift selector is a rotary dial mounted vertically to the right of the steering wheel, and I, for one, found it pretty friendly to operate. If you should ever have to rock the truck back and forth, to work yourself out of a rut, for instance, the rotary dial makes that easier.

The other segment-exclusive is the Ram’s optional air suspension ($1,595), which is derived from the same system the Jeep Grand Cherokee boasts. The air suspension responds to the special burden of pickups, namely that they have to ride and handle well whether they are unladen or fully loaded. The air suspension allows the Ram to climb 2 inches in the air to better clear obstacles off road. When the Ram reaches highway speeds, the air suspension settles into its low highway stance (you get a little chime and indicator to tell you so).

In trucks equipped with the eight-speed transmission, the Ram can activate its (optional) aero-shutters, which block off portions of the grille to reduce aerodynamic drag. Surely the most underappreciated number in the Ram spec sheet is its 0.36 coefficient of drag, given that the 2013 Ram’s grille is larger, higher and more bluff than before, recalling the big-rig aesthetics of the mid-1990s.

I spent some time in a V6-equipped Ram 1500 SLT and instantly liked its ready torque, its throaty, trucklike timbre and its overall refinement. The ZF-sourced eight-speeder slipped among its ratios as if it were vacated from a Lexus sedan. The Gross Vehicle Weight Rating for the Ram is 6,800 pounds, so the lighter V6-powered truck actually has a higher payload (1,490 pounds) than the heavier, Hemi-powered Laramie Longhorn (1,146 pounds). The V6 has nice, punchy acceleration and an unstrained waft in double overdrive. If buyers didn’t actually count spark plug wires, they’d think it was a V8.

But the biggest rodeo buckle is the Longhorn, and that comes only with the 5.7-liter Hemi V8, producing 395 hp at 5,600 rpm and 407 pound-feet of torque at 3,950 rpm. Plenty of humpity-hump, for sure.

I always feel a bit fraudulent when I have a pickup to test and nothing to haul or tow around. I got to get me a boat. I did, however, load up the V6 Ram with yard debris, scratched the paint and felt sick about it.

With the Laramie Longhorn I just indulged in mile after high-speed mile of interstate driving, serenely situated between my good buddies in their big rigs. The Ram’s interior is full of big, purposeful switches designed to be friendly to users wearing heavy gloves. Brightwork bezels surround the large, fuss-free gauges (and the multicolor LCD display is situated between the speedo and tach). The 8.4-inch touch screen, with app-style user interface, and the discreet ambient cabin lighting lend the Longhorn a touch of Atomic Ranch modernity.

And I couldn’t get that Bon Jovi song out of my head. You know the one. I’m a cowboy. On a steel cow I ride.


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