See sig, or we can play the guessing game!

I had to order one because finding a lightly optioned regular cab 4x4 is just about impossible. They are either totally stripped 2wd with crank windows or loaded to the hilt mega super duper cabs.



Ram has the best designed regular cab truck, you can tell they actually care about selling them to contractors. GM has given up on the regular cab and you can't touch a Ford this year.

I don't tow so I got the V6 which puts out 305hp so I expect it should do OK. I typically get what the window sticker says for fuel mileage so its a bump to 16/23 from my current 14/19.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Looks good!
Is dodge the one that offers bedside storage compartments now?

I think you will be more than fine with 300hp. remember when that was a lot of HP? I still have 190hp in my full size van and its adequate, even fully loaded

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You can't get the Ram boxes in the 8ft bed, if so I would have gotten them. Very useful for little stuff and you still have a full width bed.

My 190hp 4.3 does just fine as well, I couldn't justify spending the extra $2k on the Hemi. If I got a larger truck I would but this truck doesn't weigh much more than my current truck and has the 8spd with a 3.55 rear so it should move right along.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Wow, i cant believe that feature isnt available on the 8ft bed! What a shame

Id love something like that on my 86 ranger with 7ft bed.

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you'll be the only guy on the road with a stripped down regular cab

I had a '14 quad cab 1500 as a rental for a few days. Rode great. Cab layout really well thought out. Plenty of places to put stuff. Center console was PERFECT for a clip board and other supplies.

Did a decent burnout

Congrats on the new buy!
~Nate

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95 Honda Shadow ACE 1100.
1999 Plymouth Neon Expresso. 2.4 swap, 10.5 to 1 comp, big cams. Autocross time attack vehicle!
2012 Escape, 'hunter" (5 sp 4cyl)

Nice truck. I also prefer a regular cab truck. Around here the current fad is having a truck longer than their house. I prefer not needing 40 acres to turn it around. I have a car for hauling passengers.

BTW, with those wheels and all the chrome, it doesn't look at all like a stripped down model. It looks sharp.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

Agree, the trend in trucks is beyond absurd. Just the other day i dealt with an F250 that quite literally had a larger turning radius than a 30 passenger shuttle bus.

I cant believe these people drive these things around as DDs.

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There is no shopping center in the small town that I live near, but there is a strip mall that probably has a few hundred cars on a busy day. I bet that I could walk around it on an average busy day and find fifty four door, full size pickups that are not within the striped area of their parking space and almost all of them will not have the slightest scratch in the bed.

They are used for status symbol passenger cars. Folks have the right to drive anything they want AFAIAC, but this fad has gotten totally ridiculous. If you drive a passenger car you can't even park anywhere that allows you to see if there is traffic coming when you back out of a parking place and it is hard to find a parking place that doesn't have part of someone's huge truck in it.

There are some folks that need these trucks, ranchers, plumbers, construction people, and even those with hobbies such as horses, car racers or RV draggers, but I would venture to say that here, 90% or probably more are completely unnecessary and nothing but a status symbol.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

What is the status that these alleged status symbols represent?

Beats the heck out of me but brodozers are abundant here in southern New England, too, and they sure aren't getting worked! Must mean something to someone.

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

Compensation.

Im working a part time job taking people to the airport in a shuttle, and i can tell you definitely that there is a striking correlation between height and size of truck that comes in to the lot.

Its almost comedic. The more outlandishly huge the truck that rumbles in, the more likely the driver to be on the shorter side. There are definite exceptions, but there is certainly a trend.

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Came upon this article a while ago and voila! It's crystal clear.

What explains the rise of the XXL pickup? Customer demand, for one. You can’t carry a load of plywood or tow a trailer home with a Ford Focus. And the comforts of tricked-out models such as the Ford F-150 King Ranch, with heated and cooled front seats, are unbeatable. Recently, cheap fuel has also helped prompt consumers to buy bigger.

For the past few years, a quirk in federal policy has made it easy for Americans to keep supersizing their rides: Under CAFE rules that took effect in 2011, bigger cars have lower mileage requirements. For the first 30 or so years CAFE was on the books, the rules divided the market into cars and light trucks but held all vehicles in each class to the same fuel-efficiency standard. Automakers that sold only gas guzzlers, whether big cars or big trucks, had to pay penalties. That changed with a reconception of CAFE that began under President George W. Bush in 2008 and culminated in rules the Obama administration promulgated for 2011 and beyond.
Now, automakers’ mileage targets vary depending on the “footprints” of the vehicles they sell—the area between the four wheels. Cars and trucks are still regulated separately, but within each class, fuel efficiency requirements drop as vehicles grow. That means automakers whose sales mix is weighted toward bigger vehicles have lower fuel-economy targets to meet. They no longer have to offset their big gas guzzlers with sales of small gas sippers to bring up the fuel-economy averages. As a result, there’s nothing anymore to hold them back from selling lots of big trucks, which drive profits. Ford gets half its U.S. profit from large pickups, and General Motors gets about 35 percent, says Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson.

..........Sandy Munro, chief executive officer of Munro & Associates, a consulting company in Auburn Hills, Mich., that specializes in cost studies, says, “I can’t begin to tell you how much simpler it is to make a truck vs. a car. If I was a head guy at Chrysler or Ford or whoever, my focus would be: How do I get everybody to buy trucks, where I can make a tremendous amount of money?”"

Bigger Pickups Are Result of Change in Fuel Standards - Bloomberg Business

3/4 ton trucks and up are CAFE exempt. Gas is cheap and financing is easy, people like big trucks.

Auto manufactures love big trucks, for a few pretty cheap options they can charge like crazy, the margin on a $70k F350 must be huge.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Its not a stripped truck really I added a number of options to it, including the wheels and chrome. Its more or less middle of the road equipment wise, I'm going to have an aftermarket GPS navigation system installed as well.

But compared to the luxury trucks with heated steering wheels its lightly optioned! Everyone kept trying to sell me back up cameras as well which I don't see the need for on a regular cab half ton.

I priced out some larger trucks but could not wrap my head around spending $40k++ for a half ton truck. This truck was expensive enough at $32k OTD!

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200