I put it to you, the truck-buying audience, that there’s no winner any longer in the “Pepsi Challenge” among trucks. There’s simply too little separation between the rows, trucks, interiors or automakers to justify those lame, profane stickers on the back windows anymore. Calvin couldn’t even tell the difference between many of them anymore — with or without marking them.
Indeed, very little advertising for trucks is solely dedicated to distinguishing between the three major (and two minor) players in the pickup truck game. As a wiser man told me once, “You don’t see restaurants knocking each other on TV because they all want the same thing: People going out to eat more.” Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford and to a lesser extent Toyota and Nissan spend more time telling you how their trucks make you feel than they do shaming the other guy. (That is, if you can understand the announcer as he breathlessly mutters through his mustache.)
That doesn’t mean they’re not willing to fist fight for your business. Domestic pickup trucks are a competitive market because the margins are so high. That truck with an interior gussied up like the set of “Oklahoma!” makes possible smaller cars with little or no profit. Figure that every $50,000 King Ranch F-150 that Ford manages to push out the door makes possible three $25,000 Focus ST’s that I’d really rather be driving anyway.
I’m showing my bias because I’ve never had the same attraction to trucks that I’ve had to cars. Even after driving dozens of trucks over the past few years, I can endlessly enjoy how over-engineered they are but little else. For every pickup pressed into log-hauling or brick-towing duty, there’s seven more enlisted to grocery store runs and glorified station-wagon service. I delight in pressing a tapped engine pushing up a 10 percent grade at high altitude at 40 mph and towing 5,000 lbs., because that battery of piston punishment is an engineering Olympus like sending a man to the moon. I also know very few people ever ask their trucks to do that. So the idea that it can trod over heaven and earth, but still entertain with rear-seat DVD systems means to me our best and brightest engineers are working for all the truck makers nowadays.
And that’s the point. Up and down the range, nearly every one of the full-size entrants can do every bit of what the other can. Overall, 2013 has been a banner year for trucks because they’re consistently good. Here are my surprises for this year, in no particular order and wholly un-scientifically ranked:
1. 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel
Almost unbelievably, no one offered a domestic full-size pickup with a diesel option (heavy duty not included) until this year. The 3.0-liter six, which is built by a subsidiary of Fiat, GM Motari, and not Cummins, is a viable answer to CAFE fuel economy standards that will inevitably catch up to trucks. Alongside Ford’s EcoBoost and Chevrolet’s cylinder deactivation, the Ram diesel is a civil answer for the question that comes up plenty when you’re driving a pickup: “Where’s a gas station around here?”
Sure, the price premium on top of the 5.7-liter HEMI V8 ($2,850 more) is enough for pause, but if you’re the kind of buyer that keeps these trucks around for a while, that’ll come back — maybe. (I figured, just in quick calculation that fuel savings will pay for it in around 4 years at an average $0.30 diesel price difference.)
But that’s not where the EcoDiesel makes its case for existence. There’s torque everywhere in the oil burner. It hits its peak 420 lb.-ft. at only 2,000 rpm, which is what you’re asking when you’re digging stumps out of the ground on weekends. In addition to the power, it’s also very sedate in how it delivers. I drove the Ram 2500 HD with a 6.7-liter Cummins diesel engine only a few weeks after driving the EcoDiesel and that behemoth had the type of power that clubbed you over the head. In fact, driving through Boulder, Colo. — a city that would elect Patchouli oil mayor if it could — the big heavy duty truck nearly was pelted with organic, free-range eggs. The whisper-quiet EcoDiesel is the gentleman’s pick for chaining down forests.
I don’t think the EcoDiesel, which hasn’t been ranked by the EPA yet with mileage estimates, will ever get the Sierra Club’s endorsement, but with “Eco” in the name, you never know.
2. 2014 GMC Sierra/Chevrolet Silverado
Redesigned this year, the GM full-size pickup is more of an improvement rather than a wholly new model. The outgoing Silverado/Sierra featured interior buttons and fixtures that I could recognize from my father’s 1995 Chevrolet Silverado. Or in other words, it wasn’t wearing its age very well.
So when the redesigned “Sierraldo” was unleashed earlier this year it wasn’t shocking to see that most of General Motors’ efforts were inside the cab.
The truck — which I’ve considered to be the middle ground between Ford’s “glam” and Ram’s “glah” — is still understated inside. There’s a functional feel to every knob, switch and button outside of the navigation unit, which is to say, I get the feeling everything has been tested with leather gloves on. But whereas in previous models it looked like GM glued parts into the dash year-after-year, the 2014 is laid out in a fairly cogent manner.
The trio of engine options, one V6 and two V8s, all complement the truck very well in the sense that none of them are wholly annoying. My pick was the 5.3-liter V8 that shut down up to four cylinders for better fuel management, and offered 355 horsepower. It’s a refined mill for a more refined pickup.
It’s true that Ram has been picking and biting at GM and Ford’s share of the pickup truck market, but my guess is that with the more modest Silverado/Sierra the GM offer is snatching buyers who wouldn’t otherwise be considering a truck.
3. 2014 Toyota Tundra
Somewhere in fourth or fifth place in the domestic truck market, Toyota is plugging away at making a case for a serious contender that doesn’t get a lot of attention. Which may be why the new, redesigned Tundra is as inconspicuous as an atomic bomb. Seriously, Mack trucks don’t have grilles this big.
Toyota’s new Tundra carries over the same lineup of engines from previous years, of which the 5.7-liter V8 is still a throwback to when gas was $1 a gallon. That’ll likely change over the next few years, but what hopefully doesn’t is the amount of engineering that’s gone into the Tundra. Toyota brass were eager to point out how their bumpers were separated into three pieces, instead of just one big one, because work trucks have a habit of getting banged around. Perhaps my favorite feature is the ventilated seats that don’t blow cool air on your back, but rather the Tundra’s wicks the hot air away from your back like it was Under Armor. Seriously cool stuff there.
It may not have the mill to overwhelm other buyers, but the Tundra was a genuine surprise from an automaker that’s had a rep for being otherwise dull.
You get the feeling that most truckmakers aren’t working to steal you from the other guys’ lot as much as they are looking to convince car buyers to pick a truck for the first time. With these three, they’re making a pretty good case.