Well…the Honda Ridgeline won this “coveted” award last year, hailed as the thinking person’s truck.

Whatever relevance the Truck of the Year award possessed went out the door in 2006.

And as far as a conspiracy theory or anything else along those lines is concerned, if you worked for a Ford or Toyota dealership you’d have far worse things to say about the Silverado than anyone here has.

· Best In Class Fuel Economy…22 mpg highway

· Best In Class Quiet

· Best In Class Towing

· Best In Class Payload

· Guaranteed Quality with the Best Coverage in America

5 years/100,000 miles powertrain warranty, roadside assistance

and courtesy transportation.

vexner: yes its more correct to say “small relative to its peers.” The Dodge has been a distant third in sales for years. And its been in last place for many years until the Tundra/Titan came out.

I understand “small” just as “large” can be considered subjective term, but somehow I have a hard time understanding how the 3rd best selling pickup in the US and a vehicle that has for quite a few years now been ranked consistently in the top 5 of all vehicles sold in the US…sometimes ranked as high as the 3rd best selling vehicle overall…being called small. Yep, the Ram sells about half what Ford and Chevy sell, but a vehicle that sells around 400K to 500K per year small?

Loyal, I guess so, just as are Ford and Chevy pickup buyers. This loyality will be Toyota’s challenge as all these pickups are good with the degrees of good and bad that seperate each being negligable…so that it probably boils down to brand loyality as the number 1 reason why a person purchases a given full size pickup.

Ok, if you consider this obsecure…

*Based on R. L. Polk & Co. Vehicles in Operation registration statistics 1986-2005. †Durability based on longevity.

http://www.dodge.com/ram_truck/index.html

“All three have some obscure fact to make that claim.”

OK, if you consider this an obsecure R.L.Polk statistic…

“*Based on R. L. Polk & Co. Vehicles in Operation registration statistics 1986-2005. †Durability based on longevity.”

Link:http://www.dodge.com/ram_truck/index.html

“Dodge’s claim to fame appears to be a small but loyal group of buyers.”

Small? I understand large and small can be subjective, kinda like those AOL inches, but the Ram is the 3rd best selling pickup and has been consistantly in the top 5 selling vehicles overall for quite a few years…I think it currently ranks 4th. If you consider selling 400K+/- small, so be it.

Loyal? I suspect so, just like Ford and Chevy truck buyers…this will be the hardest conquest for Toyota.

“Problem is, I don’t see a whole lot of older Dodges on the road. The 94-01 bodystyle is hard to find at most Houston worksites or on the roads. While I see plenty of 1980s Chevys, I haven’t seen an old school Dodge in months. Maybe years.”

I still see quite a number of the first gen Big Rig styled Rams around here in Alabama…even some with Texas plates…nope, don’t see many of the gen before…could be that they usually sold around 80K units per year, ya think?

We don’t have corners on the prairie and you can see forever!

CJ

Just be thankful he didn’t have to turn a corner or stop suddenly.

Not true. While the Ford E series is an old platform, the GM vans are not. They are actually built on 2006 Silverado chassis. When you say 1980’s comfort and convenience, are you referring to 4 wheel disc brakes, StabiliTrak system, anti lock brakes or Vortec engines?

Perhaps, but if “a vehicle has to be used as intended” is your basis for buying one, then we should all be driving 4-cylider sedans or wagons. By the way, “use it as intended” would kill 90% of the sports and performance car industry too.

As for recreational utility, no arguement there. However, if someone buys a nice truck to haul around his (or her) nice recreational equipment (have you costed a decent snowmobile these days?) then more power to them.

On another note, the truck industry is hot right now with performance mods. Whether its chipping a Cummins diesel for more horsepower or putting a six-inch lift kit on mudder tires, this is big business these days (on par with the car tuner market). Does this make truck buyers performance guys now?

It’s something else to be blown off the road by a ten foot high F-350 going 100 mph! At least he went by me as opposed to over!

Um… I am not basing ALL truck buyers on the pro-racing dudes from Skip Barber.

I was just stating that I found it interesting that dudes who race around tracks all day drive big trucks for the ladies.

Oh, and they all need to haul their sprint cars around, too.

The available, lockable EZ Lift tailgate(1) takes only about 16 lbs. of effort to operate. This is roughly a 40 percent reduction in the force required to lift the tailgate compared to the previous-generation Silverado. This makes for easy and quick access to tools and cargo in the pickup bed. And, as with all Silverado models, this tailgate can be easily removed when needed.

Comparing a Dakota with an LS460?

Excuse me while I go review the latest Yugo with a Porsche 991 Turbo.

Trucks boring? Two minutes for Liebermaning! :)
Well yes, except when you need to haul something and then they are simply useful

people also like to: hunt, fish, camp, snowmobile, RV, ATV, ride, etc. A truck sure helps and lots of people do the above.
I live in NH and people do all that stuff. That’s still utility. And some of them drive $40K trucks. No accounting for taste. But I sure see a lot of trucks that clearly never see a dirt road or haul anything other than some lard butt to the office.

Nobody accuses a Jeep of being boring even though its name derives from General Purpose.
A Wrangler isn’t boring. The rest are.

If you can’t afford your dream truck new
A good truck shouldn’t cost more than the gear it carries.
My idea of a dream truck is maybe $4K worth of battered 4WD that I don’t need to wash or have to lock and that can get me to some of my good fly-fishing spots, a good kayaking river, and to my favorite ski hills in winter.

jerseydevil: (December 8th, 2006 at 11:11 am)
Around here, new pickups have little in them but bloated egos and chrome wheels. The people who are actually carrying stuff have old beat up trucks.

Right on!

Very important point, that people either don’t care about, or don’t understand. Let’s assume a worst-case scenario where Toyota makes about $6000 profit per Tundra (current estimates peg full size truck profits to be over $10,000 per truck whether it’s a Chevy, Dodge, or Toyota). Now lets roughly assume with the new Tundra, in the first year, Toyota will increase sales by about 100,000 units. Doing the math, that equates to a $600 million increase in profits from just those 100,000 units. A more realistic scenario would be an average of about $10,000 in profits per Tundra, which would mean an extra 1 Billion dollars added annually to Toyota’s profits.

I hope the bean counters at GM, Ford, and Chrysler are paying attention here, because these are pretty scary numbers.

Vans are cool. Granted nobody puts funkalicious paint jobs, slotted mag wheels, white letter radials and shag carpeting on them anymore…but I think a few van road tests are long overdue. :-)

Not as overdue as actual top-to-bottom redesigns of those vans. Ford and GM make quite a bit of money selling lots of those vans which are still based on ancient platforms and have 1980’s comfort and convenience.