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Will Nissan's Cummins deal upset Ram's marketing mojo? [w/poll]

Ram has used Cummins engines in its heavy duty trucks since 1989, and it is the only pickup truck brand to use products from the Indiana-based engine maker. With the announcement that the next Nissan Titan will also use a Cummins powerplant, and a Nissan spokesman having already said "We will definitely leverage the Cummins brand name," a piece in Automotive News wonders whether the deal will affect the way Ram markets its tie-up with Cummins.
The question really is, how intense is this competition? While it is the first time that trucks from two different brands have used Cummins engines, they'll be two different engines in two different kinds of trucks; Nissan is going to put a 5.0-liter turbodiesel in a non-heavy-duty Titan, Ram only uses its 6.7-liter, inline six-cylinder turbodiesel in heavy-duty offerings. The diesel that Ram will offer in its light-duty, half-ton 1500 is a 3.0-liter V6 EcoDiesel with 240 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque - compared to about 300 hp and 550 lb-ft expected from the Titan's Cummins - and its marketing so far has focused on the fuel economy gains.
If Nissan was going to prove its commitment to the segment, it had to do something compelling. If we're talking about sales competition between Ram and Nissan, Ram has sold 201,633 trucks as of July this year, up 24.2 percent, 31,314 of those sales coming last month; Nissan has sold 10,020 Titans through the end of July, down 21.1 percent, and just 1,168 in July itself. Nissan's new truck boss - who hopped there from Ram - said that buyers have asked for a powerful turbodiesel in something other than a heavy duty pickup, and from what we've read on various comment boards, the pickup truck crowd is excited about Nissan's move.

Here's how I averaged 31.5 mpg in a Ram HFE EcoDiesel

Few things could be more American than a bright red Ram pickup parked in front of Mount Rushmore. To get there and back on a single tank of fuel from the nearest major city, however, requires a collaboration of international proportions. This particular Ram is a 1500 HFE EcoDiesel, festooned with badges indicating the presence of an Italian turbodiesel V6 mated to a German eight-speed automatic. Some Rams are even built in Mexico, but this one only boasted a 27 percent Mexican parts content. A rather global truck, this one. It is the sum of its parts, but those bits and pieces were curated by a team of engineers in Michigan. At the risk of hipstering its history, the Ram HFE (High Fuel Efficiency) package was truly custom-tailored for one purpose: Achieving an EPA-rated 29 mpg on the highway, which is 1 mpg better than a standard Ram 1500 EcoDiesel. It did just that. No, it did better than that, but more on that in a minute. The Ram has stuck with its "son of big rig" styling for nearly 25 years; opting for the EcoDiesel V6 means you can fill up next to Peterbilts. My goal was to bypass truck stops entirely. I left Denver early in the morning and aimed to enjoy lunch with Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln looking over my shoulder before heading home for dinner. Mt. Rushmore is about 370 miles away from the northernmost truck stop within Denver, where I filled the Ram HFE's tank and headed northbound on Interstate 25 toward Wyoming and a series of smaller highways that roughly follow an old stagecoach route from Cheyenne to what is now Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. The Ram was such a fuel miser that I could have driven an extra 50 miles each way and still avoided the pumps. It's beautifully stark country: the kind of desolate place where the FM radio does a lot of seeking; that's all the audio I had on board because the Ram HFE is decidedly lacking in comfort and convenience features. To get to an EPA-estimated 29 mpg highway figure, Ram engineers had to goals: To strip weight and improve aerodynamics. In the wind tunnel, the medium-size 4x2 Quad Cab with 20-inch wheels and the Ram Express trim level's one-piece front bumper proved the most aerodynamic configuration of the many flavors of Ram available. Interestingly, testing revealed that adding full-length tubular side steps and a tri-fold tonneau cover normally offered in the Mopar accessories catalog aid aerodynamics.

2021 Ram TRX, BMW 5 Series and the end of the Alfa Romeo 4C | Autoblog Podcast #657

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski. They kick things off discussing the brand-new 2021 Ram 1500 TRX, discussing how it compares with its main rival, the Ford F-150 Raptor. They move on to the latest BMW 5 Series before a quick overview of the Buick Enclave. The podcast wraps up by saying goodbye to the Alfa Romeo 4C, which leaves the world after the 2020 model year. Autoblog Podcast #657 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown What we're driving2021 Ram 1500 TRX 2021 BMW 540i 2020 Buick Enclave Other news Goodbye, Alfa Romeo 4C Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video: