It’s time for a Dodge Ram XFE … and perhaps old-fashioned granny gears.

The <a href=”/reviews/2009/ram-1500.html”>2009 Dodge Ram</a> is a really impressive truck - but some people don’t need its size or capacity. For them, I propose the more fuel-efficient Dodge Ram XFE, with judicious modifications to keep the look and utility for those who just need a great big bed to carry great big things in. 

Seriously, how many people cross streams and boulder beds in their pickups? How many load up 9,000 pound trailers? Would a lighter-duty, lower-height, lighter-weight pickup be just as good, say with a mild 5,000 pound tow rating and an inch or two less ground clearance?

Would people buy this truck if it came with a standard tonneau cover (to cut wind resistance) and an extra 2 or 3 miles per gallon?

Now, let’s shift gears for a moment. Has the time also come for smaller engines? While it’s terrific to have a speedy Hemi, lots of people operate their trucks on farms and construction sites. For them, a top speed of 65 mph would probably be fine; it’s torque that matters, and you can get torque from gearing. You used to be able to buy full-sized pickups with <a href=”/slant6.html”>slant sixes</a> - that’s a whopping hundred horsepower. Indeed, the slant six was an improvement over the prior flat-head six!

I wonder whether one could get away with a heavy duty truck driven by a little 3.7 liter V6 and power-oriented gearing. Indeed, I wonder about the 2.4 liter four-cylinder used in the PT Cruiser. It gets 150 horsepower, far more than the old slant six and way more than the flatheads. Keep in mind I know it might be a crazy idea. I’m not an engineer. The old in-line sixes had way more torque than today’s four-cylinders, and they generated it right off idle. Still, I can’t help but think that in the Ram 3500, a 3.7 liter V6 with granny gears might be a great combination for people who don’t care much about acceleration or top speed, as long as they get the pulling power they need. 

Just about every automaker now is playing with small-displacement, turbocharged engines for cars - 1.4 liters, for example, to replace today’s 2.4 liter engines. They’re working on all sorts of harebrained schemes to extract every last mile per gallon and spending literally hundreds of hours in wind tunnels. Perhaps it’s also time to use that flex manufacturing skill and adapt the traditional full-sized pickup truck to a new era, too.

Dodge Royal Monaco…pickup truck

It has to be seen… for the full story and more photos, see http://www.allpar.com/cars/dodge/mystery-monaco.html … this precious pickup is in Germany. Thanks, Duc-Man, for sending us the photos.

Selling Jeep: why it can’t happen and how it can happen

Analysts and autowriters are falling over themselves yet again to talk about how Chrysler could sell Jeep. Partly that’s just to reuse their old “Daimler’s selling Jeep” stories, I suspect; partly it’s because Mahindra is coming to America, with their own vehicles that share common spiritual ancestors.

As a company, Jeep cannot really be split off from Chrysler. Yes, production is (aside from Patriot and Compass) unique to Jeep; the Dodge Nitro is part of the Liberty production line, but it’s not a major vehicle and could be dropped easily enough. The hard part is the shared engineers and components. Jeep is intertwined with Dodge Truck quite thoroughly. It would take a long time to separate Jeep from Chrysler, not that it couldn’t be done with enough time, money, and focus.

But who would really want (and be able to buy) Jeep? Toyota already has an offroad reputation thanks to the 4Runner and Land Cruiser. Ford has marketed its vehicles as being off road ready, and doesn’t need vehicles that can actually go offroad without major modifications to reap the benefits of their years of marketing. GM is trying to get RID of Hummer completely, buying dealerships to avoid lawsuits. Honda rarely buys anything they didn’t invent.

Wall Street seems to think Mahindra or Fiat will buy Jeep - but why would they? Mahindra makes Jeeps already… perfectly suited to their market and far better suited than Jeep itself to higher gas prices. Fiat… they’d be nuts to go into an area so far from their home turf. But analysts don’t think like that; after all, they were very happy with Daimler ruling over Chrysler until the end. (See our earlier Wall Street blog.)

There is one possibility, though.

A more than usually knowledgeable reporter pointed out to me that the Jeep name could be sold without actually selling Jeep. Say Mahindra were to pay, say, $400 million for the name, which has a global reach. Mahindra has the products; they don’t have the name recognition outside of India. They could perhaps buy the Wrangler plans and plants; or perhaps not. It would not really be needed. Chrysler could simply drop the Wrangler and its unique platform, close down another factory (something which analysts always like). The Patriot could be renamed, the Caliber and Compass merged. The Liberty would be dropped and anyone who wanted one would be steered to a Nitro until the factory could be shut down. Finally, the Grand Cherokee is supposed to merge platforms with Durango anyway; so the name could be dropped and Durango would carry the torch. Chrysler would then have just two brands, with Dodge being its Toyota and Chrysler being its Kia.

It’s possible. It’s still not likely, but it’s possible.

Patriot vindicated

This is not a column about K.T. Keller, the great Chrysler patriot who may have lost the company while saving the country (or at least, saving the country a lot of cash).

This is about the Jeep Patriot.

The Patriot came out to much scoffing at various auto blogs. Critics were fairly merciless, and one which proclaims to be especially truthful simply ravaged the vehicle - and then brooked no criticism of its criticism. Without actually taking the Patriot offroad, many simply said it couldn’t possibly be any good off-road.

This is of course standard fare for Jeep followers. No new Jeep is ever worthy; the predecessors were always better (of course sometimes that’s true). But with the Patriot, people were already feeling as though Jeep was becoming less credible, thanks to the Compass.

You know the Compass. It was supposed to be a great rally car, something akin to the Subaru Impreza. Somewhere along the way it became an economy wagon. Typical DaimlerChrysler thinking seemed to prevail - corners that could be cut were cut. Corners that could not be cut were cut, too.

Following the Compass could have been good, if this was a different age and if the spirit of the Internet was a bit more reflective. Articles could have begun, “Unlike the Compass…”

They didn’t.

The Internet does not usually lend itself to careful thought and reflection; it’s more the ignorant leading the fanatical. Having an opinion, as one engineer who has many opinions put it, does not make one’s thoughts worthy.

There’s also a lot of groupthink, not just on the Internet, but in general. We all know that German cars are all superior, followed by Japanese, then Korean, and finally, at the bottom, ignoring the French and Italians, come the Americans. We all know that it doesn’t matter if we buy a car made entirely in Japan or Korea or Mexico; it won’t affect our jobs. And especially, we know that anything made by the New Chrysler is a piece of junk with a lousy interior, and anything made by Toyota is superior — ignoring any actual experiences within a Toyota and a Chrysler. That also had an impact. Chrysler’s on a downswing and people are happy to push them deeper into the grave. GM and Ford had their turns, too. Ford was reputedly on the verge of bankruptcy. So was GM. Indeed, I had a friend who insisted stockholders would sue if GM did not declare Chapter 11, because only then could they escape those horrid unions that insisted GM focus all their energies on big trucks.

Obviously, Ford and GM did not go under. Equally obviously, the unions had little if anything to do with GM’s product decisions - or for that matter Ford’s and Chrysler’s.

The point of all this is that the Jeep Patriot, when I drove it, wasn’t bad. It was, in fact, so much nicer than the Caliber that I was rather surprised by it. And when people actually took it off-road, they found that properly equipped Patriots were pretty respectable.

Imagine that.

Now, Patriot sales are rising, at a time when just about all other American cars larger than a Neon are falling. The Patriot is the bright light of the Belvidere factory.

Hopefully, some of those with opinions to spare will start to give the Patriot a second look - and maybe even try it out on the trail. It’s not a Wrangler Rubicon, but likewise, it’s not a Compass.

New Dodge Ram is here!

The new Dodge Ram is here, and we (along with the New York Times and a bunch of others) have the information and photos. One big difference between Allpar and many others, of course, is that we actually read the reports, condensed (without dropping information) and edited them, added an engineer’s analysis of the new rear suspension and showed where it came from (not Mercedes!), and basically tried to make it something that will be looked at in 2018, which will, if we’re still around, be our twentieth anniversary.

Here’s the link - spread it around! - to the most advanced, nicest-looking pickup you can almost buy:
http://www.allpar.com/model/ram/2009-ram.html

The big rigs: Class 4 and 5 trucks are coming

An engineer and communications man from Chrysler have been crossing the country, spreading the word about the new Dodge 4500 and Dodge 5500 trucks. These are very impressive trucks, and they follow on the heels of the Dodge Ram 3500 Chassis Cab which, amazingly, has taken the #1 sales position in Class 3 trucks for two months in a row - coming from out of nowhere to steal Ford’s long-standing sales lead (and GM’s long-standing #2 status).

Some say that people don’t buy a Dodge truck; they buy a Cummins diesel engine with a truck wrapped around it. That’s undoubtedly a huge part of these rigs’ attraction, but there’s more to it than that - though I wouldn’t have known exactly what else there was until today. Yes, Chrysler put out a long press release bragging about unique features, but some of them are “more than meets the eye.” One major draw is the fact that you can take a huge fitting developed for another truck, say a Ford F-450 that’s being retired, and just move it onto the Dodge and expect it to fit — because Dodge has not only gone with industry-standard electricals and rails, but has gone one step further and pushed everything, that is everything, beneath the rails, without the protrusions of some competitors. Part of that, the engineer explained (we’ll have his name and picture in an article next week), is because Dodge was developing the truck knowing what the emissions rules would be from 2007-2009 (and, indeed, past 2009, into the very tightly controlled realm that will see urea treatment become almost standard). Therefore, they were able to engineer the emissions controls into the body from the start - and nothing seems “added on” or “in the way.”

Another interesting story is the brakes. The press release noted that an engine brake is now standard, and the front brakes are the biggest in the industry. Not mentioned was why this is important - namely, cutting back on brake jobs. The Dodge was engineered with long-term cost of ownership in mind, and if you can cut the number of brake jobs in half, that gives you more productivity (the vehicle’s not out of service) and lower costs. Between the in-service items and the Cummins engine, which is powerful but surprisingly quiet - just a little louder than a Hemi - it’s no wonder the upfitters have been lining up to get behind the new Dodges.

Then there’s another advantage - flexible manufacturing. Apparently these rigs can be built on the same assembly line as regular Dodge trucks and the Class 3 chassis-cabs, interchangeably; the diesels take a little longer to build, but they don’t need a separate line (presumably lowering costs) and they don’t need to be run in huge batches, which means that if a customer orders a truck in November, they can get it in November or December. Turnaround time is important in this industry, and Dodge has it.

By the way, these Rams are also sold as the Sterling Bullet; earlier I said that this was a joint effort, but I’ve been corrected — it’s a 100% Dodge engineering feat. That makes it even more impressive.

If you want my guess, this will be a winner - a truck that puts Dodge onto the commercial-vehicle map for the first time since the 1970s. Yes, it looks good, inside and out; but to many the beauty is where you can’t see it (at least not after it’s been fitted out).