Have a cause looking for a rebel? Why not a truck that's literally a rebel? At least, that's what RAM calls this version of its 1500 truck.
Keep reading to get our driving impressions.
Writing about pickup trucks is tricky anymore because it’s difficult to be objective about a vehicle that costs nearly as much as my first house and will likely never be used by 90% of the people buying it for what it’s best at. Pickups—for reasons too complex and exhausting to explore here—have become the new Honda Civic, being driven by one person on daily errands and rarely seeing the business end of a trail or a trailer.
Which is kind of too bad, because there are a lot of good pickups out there right now. But their transition to daily driver duty has turned them into bloated luxury cars with open-air trunks.
Okay, enough old-guy grousing, how’s the RAM? Yeah, it’s pretty good, until you realize that it costs over $77,000. I mean, it’s a truck. It’s got a 5.7-liter engine and a 5’7” bed (Coincidence? No way. Wake up, sheeple), and it tows brilliantly.
We hooked the trailer up to make a run to a local big-box hardware conglomerate to pick up some wood and the optional air suspension leveled the truck for us, managed the ride and basically made towing seem like a drive down to the Tastee-Freeze for a twirly cone.
Too bad no one will probably ever tow with this truck again.
While our complaints about the economics of $77,000 pickup trucks are numerous, there’s little arguing that their capabilities are vast. The driving experience is becoming more car-like every day, and the myriad of buttons on the dash are evidence of the myriad of features that they control. And, honestly, while the dash is a bit button-filled, we’re okay with that because they’re attractive, nicely weighted, and their presence also means that simple functions don’t require dives into the DIC menu.
The DIC is present, of course—all 12 inches of it—but its functionality is best reserved for more complex vehicle functions, navigation and entertainment purposes.
The leveling system is a nice touch when a trailer is attached, and the entry/exit mode is a nice touch for those of us without any leg length to spare, but the truck raises itself out of this mode as soon as it moves, and lowering the truck again takes several seconds.
The jump from the ground to the seat is substantial, and I’m not just saying this as a short king. Our test vehicle was not equipped with step boards, which we would have appreciated in a $77,000+ truck. Moving the truck from a parking space to the pickup spot at Home Depot shouldn’t require extra half minute to let it lower, or mountaineering gear to hop in and out.
I’ll also take a brief aside to address the electronic rearview mirror, which utilizes a tailgate-mounted camera which displays on an LCD screen that looks suspiciously like a rearview mirror. While it seems like technology for technology’s sake at first glance, the actual use became instantly apparent when we loaded the bed up with some furniture that would have blocked the standard mirror’s view. So on that level, I dig it a lot.
But as a nearsighted glasses wearer whose up-close vision requires no correction but whose distance vision requires a bit, getting used to the focal distance change when I glance to the mirror can be disconcerting.
When you look in a conventional mirror, your focal distance is not set to the mirror, but whatever the image in the mirror is. When you look at a screen, your focal distance is whatever the distance is from that screen to your eye.
In my case, the screen was inside the range where my uncorrected vision would be, so I found myself glancing at the mirror over my glasses, or just assuming that all the cars on the road were slightly out of focus.
Anyway, 21st-century problems I guess.
And it’s also telling that I have to go to weird little esoteric items to find faults with the RAM 1500 Rebel, because overall it’s a good truck. It’s one I’ll never be able to afford, but if I could it would fulfill my needs and bring me joy. Until I looked in the mirror.
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