Instrumented Test
Ram made headlines this year by adding an EcoDiesel V-6 option to its half-ton 1500 pickup range. Our test subject here should not be mistaken for that truck. No, siree, Sergio. Although it was all-new for 2013, the heavy-duty Ram 2500 made its own kind of news this year by ditching traditional leaf springs in favor of a coil-spring, five-link rear suspension with an auto-leveling air-spring option and by sharing the full-ton 3500 model's stiffer frame.
In an odd way, though, this truck makes a good case for its EcoDiesel V-6 kid brother in the Ram's range. Opting for the $8160 Cummins diesel engine on a 4x4 Ram 2500 crew cab (three-quarter ton by traditional nomenclature, although the rated payload capacity is 2180 pounds) results in, frankly, way too much truck for most users who don’t haul or tow heavy stuff. The Cummins workhorse is too costly and too strong for those buyers who'd just like to take advantage of a modern clean diesel's efficiency advantages. Thus, it leaves figurative tons of room for the lighter diesel in the market below this truck's price point (a gas-powered 2500 HD Longhorn starts at $54,110, and the Cummins diesel version was optioned up here to $67,875) and literal tons below its capabilities.
Goin’ for Cummins
All but identical to the engines Cummins sells for use in construction equipment, commercial haulers, and buses, the Ram unit is a 6.7-liter six churning out 370 horsepower and 800 lb-ft when coupled to a six-speed automatic. (The Cummins can be mated with a manual transmission in lower trim levels, in which case it has to be down-rated to 350 horses and a mere 660 lb-ft.) As with the big diesels from Ford and GM, there's an exhaust-brake function to help when pulling big loads. The diesel now features Ram Active Air, which is a valve in the intake airbox that pulls presumably cooler, denser intake air through a port at the top of the grille rather than from the wheel well, but only under extreme circumstances of load and heat.
As equipped for this test, the factory's tow rating of 17,010 pounds merits the inclusion of the $400 fifth-wheel, gooseneck prep package, which situates a crossbar on the frame to make the hardware installation into the six-foot bed an easy bolt-in operation. You can spec a Ram 3500 with this engine to tug up to 30,000 pounds, heavy enough that you ought to carry a commercial driver’s license in your wallet.
Cowboys and Aliens
In this case, however, some of the drivetrain's capacity is devoted to carrying the substantial mass (8020 pounds on our scales) of a four-door, five-seatbelt Ram 2500 4x4 dressed to the nines. In Laramie Longhorn trim, make that overdressed to the elevens. Ram offers one trim level beyond the Longhorn, the Laramie Limited, for which we might gladly pay the extra freight to shed the cattle-skull logos and filigree splashed all over this truck. Filigree décor on the DEF-level gauge to monitor the magic blue exhaust-cleaning elixir, plus skull-motif wallpaper on the 8.4-inch Uconnect screen, are mash-ups as wry as that sci-fi western flick Cowboys and Aliens.
Something that wears both Ram and Longhorn badges sounds like a range war in the making, but that's not the end of the clashing themes. This particular two-tone Longhorn showed up with a gold-painted bumper under its chrome grille and big silver door badges right above the gold sills. Adding chrome mirrors ($180, foldaway trailering spec) and 20-inch chrome wheels with outline white-letter off-road tires ($1200) made the big rig look less like a rugged cowboy and more like a Nashville singer to our eyes. It lacked only rhinestones, settling instead for rooftop clearance lights ($80).
