There’s nothing like a truck. I’d rather push my ’94 F-250 than drive some fancy new sedan. Granted, no sedan on Earth would make it down my driveway, so whether I like it or not, I’ll be driving that old truck for a while.
Except when the vehicle fairies drop off a new ride for me to test. And a couple weeks ago, they dropped off a really sweet one. It was a 2015 Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn.
In order to measure how good a truck it was, I pitted it against my own truck in a series of tests. If you’re going to spend $56,000 on a pickup, it better be hands-down better than one that’s old enough to buy a beer, right?
The first test was the suspension. I regularly take my truck down four miles of washboard dirt roads, and if I take the speed above about 25 miles an hour, the back end tries to pass the front. So I ran that Ram down the same county road, trying to see how fast I could go before the back end started hopping. It was still holding steady at 60, but I didn’t feel like pressing my luck any faster than that. So the first challenge went to the Ram.
The next test was cargo space. My ’94 has an 8½- foot bed, while the Ram only had a 6-footer. Granted, the Ram had the RamBox integrated tool boxes in the bed rails, which meant it doesn’t need an extra box in the bed. With the tool box in my truck, I’m left with about 5 ½ feet of actual bed space. The Ram wins again, with a bed that’s a full 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, and an extra two feet if you open the tailgate and use the bed extender.
The Ram pretty much blew my F-250 out of the water on all the tests I could think of. Comfort, fuel economy, looks, you name it. Granted, if I were to buy one, a single payment would be more than my F-250 is worth. Guess I better start saving my pennies.
