2010 Ram HD 2500 Laramie Review

We get lots of trucks and cars at our place for reviewing and hence there are plenty of sports cars and hot hatches lurking around all the time. A pick up doesn’t enjoy the same popularity in our office as some of the other vehicles and I don’t really need to tell you why. People prefer driving automobiles that are quicker and are more suited to the canyon roads. I got the 2010 Ram HD 2500 Laramie at my place for testing; it is one of the few automobiles in long term fleet which is willing to do the work at notice of a moment. This pickup will always be keeping itself busy.

I first saw the civilized nature of the 2010 Ram HD 2500 Laramie at testing of 2010 Truck of the Year. Ram won there due to impressive refinement and capabilities. As winner of TOTY, it wasily got a spot in my long term fleet. A bit improvement made here was that to the cab. There was lot of sound deadening material placed and interior too was redesigned. Ram scored big points for their nice leather, fabric, attractive layout, and plastics. The seats were more comfortable here. This isn’t all, apart from the large dimensions of the cabin, the drivers of different sizes could find comfortable position of seating and didn’t have any problems in terms of visibility. This change was good enough from the earlier Ram cabins and this difference was noted by me immediately. The creature comforts here were also good including heated steering wheel an the driver information center which was very user-friendly. The quality of ride improved the level of comfort. This might be a large pick up but maneuvering it is still pretty easy because the turning radius here is better than what I first expected in the first place for something of this size. For me, it was like a monster on the streets of LA but still drove like full sized sedan.

This is what happened for me here. While testing, 2010 Ram HD 2500 Laramie took to the Mammoth Mountain and helped friends and family in moving around. It also hauled the furniture. The amount of gear that the truck could hold was ridiculous. For me, the cab was enormous and I could stuff about six gear bags inside (2 sets of clothes and snowboard boots, 2 over night bags, climbing gear backpack and a little food), long case along with 2 snow boards in rear seat, and Indian Wells Brew Co. beer case. Fitting all this was no problem. Some also used this Ram for towing the project trailers and cars that were filled up with gear across the multiple states.

During testing, all my friends had words of praise for the inline 6 Cummins turbo-diesel which had torque of 650 feet and 350 horsepower. It averaged pretty impressive fourteen miles per gallon and on open road, it was 18 miles per gallon. My truck was propelled to 60 miles per hour from stop in about 8.4 seconds and through quarter mile in about 16.4 seconds speed of 84.2 miles per hour. Cummins I-6 turbo diesel engine used here might not be as good as others in the heavy duty rig group but I still liked it. It is pretty smooth and willing. While driving down empty bed, a small nudge on throttle will release a torque wave which surges this truck down the road faster than what you’d expect from an automobile of this size.

There is no amount of work that this truck cannot handle and while testing, I regret that I didn’t have any tough enough chores for this Heavy Duty. One friend of mine said that this isn’t fair for a truck and that this is like having greyhound which you’d never run.

I am not saying that the 2010 Ram HD 2500 is absolutely flawless. For instance, this 4 wheel drive 3/4 ton is pretty tall. Also, there aren’t any side steps and hence climbing can be a bit tough. I had to correct this by installing Mopar side steps. I should have had this item in the first place because it managed to make a big difference. Also, my staff wanted something like the man step of Ford (it is a GM term) for making it easier to get inside the bed and then load all the gear in the cab’s back. Also, in some parts of the day, the chrome accents on the interior gave a lot of glare issues. Perhaps, the biggest drawback here was the disappointing build quality. A weather stripping piece of rear window had come down during our tests. I had some small rattles from center console storage lid and from one speaker. It would be better if Chrysler invested some money in new navigation system for all their products. I don’t know if all these problems were only in my test model or all the units that will be sold in the market.

There weren’t any issues of service for duration in my long term testing, total cost for maintaining the Ram was about $1046 for 3 services. First 2 trips involved changing oil, tire rotation and a full inspection and each of them cost less than 200 bucks. 15,000 miles visit included all the aforementioned services along with fluid change in rear and front differentials. This service put me back by $735.61.

When I had to give my Ram back, I realized I wanted this automobile to remain in my fleet for a long time. Unfortunately, this is not how system works here. I had to give back the truck to the manufacturer.