Driving Impressions
reviewed by
Our Ram 1500 was fitted with the 5.2-liter V8 and a 5-speed manual. Driving it made us think of the old muscle car drag racing days on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. It's that powerful and that much fun to drive.
It may not be ideally suited for a commuting situation where a lot of shifting would be involved, but it's great fun on the boulevards. It's also a really flexible, driveable combination in off-road situations, much more so than the automatic. The low-end torque of the engine and the low gearing in first and second gears make it easy to get around in most driving situations.
Front suspension on a Ram 4X4 is a coil spring setup with four leading arms, a track bar and a stabilizer bar to keep the front axle assembly located fore and aft and side to side. Rear suspension is a conventional live axle with leaf springs designed to carry heavy loads. We found the suspension delightfully smooth and supple on the street, aided by those big fat Goodyear RT/S tires. But the body is so high off the ground that some passengers--particularly females--had a great deal of entry/exit difficulty even with a grab bar on the A-pillar.
One thing we didn't like about the Ram's dynamics last year was the steering, which was light enough and quick enough, but had an enormous dead space on center, and seemed to require constant left-right adjustments to stay straight ahead. That has been fixed this year with a new steering gear setup and new steering geometry, and the feel of the truck is much more precise than earlier models.
Braking, with discs in front, drums in rear, was exemplary. The Ram stops quickly with superb straightline stability. Our truck was free of squeaks, rattles and shudders, and everything about it seemed a bit tighter, a bit smoother, a bit more high-quality than previous models we've driven.
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