2014 Ram 1500 Tradesman/express on 2040-cars

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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.

China-FCA merger could be a win-win for everyone but politicians

NEW YORK — Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne has said the car industry needs to come together, cut costs and stop incinerating capital. So far, his words have mostly fallen on deaf ears among competitors in Europe and North America. But it appears Marchionne has finally found a receptive audience — in China. FCA shares soared Monday after trade publication Automotive News reported the $18 billion Italian-American conglomerate controlled by the Agnelli family rebuffed a takeover from an unidentified carmaker from the Chinese mainland. As ugly as the politics of such a combination may appear at first blush, a transaction could stack up industrially, and perhaps even financially. A Sino-U.S.-European merger would create the first truly global auto group. That could push consolidation to the next level elsewhere. Moreover, China is the world's top market for the SUVs that Jeep effectively invented, so it might benefit FCA financially. A combo would certainly help upgrade the domestic manufacturer; Chinese carmakers have gotten better at making cars, but struggle to build global brands, and they need to develop export markets. Though frivolous overseas shopping excursions by Chinese enterprises are being reined in by Beijing, acquisitions that support the modernization and transformation of strategic industries still receive support, and the government considers the automotive industry to be strategic. A purchase of FCA by Guangzhou Automobile, Great Wall or Dongfeng Motors would probably get the same stamp of approval ChemChina was given for its $43 billion takeover of Syngenta. What's standing in the way? Apart from price (Automotive News said FCA's board deemed the offer insufficient) there's the not-insignificant matter of politics. Even as FCA shares soared, President Donald Trump interrupted his vacation to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to look into whether to investigate China's trade policies on intellectual property. Seeing storied Detroit brands like Jeep, Chrysler, Ram and Dodge handed off to a Chinese company would provoke howls among Trump's economic-nationalist supporters. It might not play well in Italy, either, to see Alfa Romeo and Maserati answering to Wuhan instead of Turin — though Automotive News said they might be spun off separately. Yet, as Morgan Stanley observes, "cars don't ship across oceans easily," and political considerations increasingly demand local manufacture of valuable products.

Lexus tops JD Power Vehicle Dependability Study again, Buick bests Toyota

It shouldn't surprise anyone, but Lexus has once again taken the top spot in JD Power's Vehicle Dependability Study. That'd be the Japanese luxury brand's fourth straight year at the top of table. The big news, though, is the rise of Buick. General Motor's near-premium brand beat out Toyota to take second place, with 110 problems per 100 vehicles compared to Toyota's 111 problems. Lexus owners only reported 89 problems per 100 vehicles. Besides Buick's three-position jump, Scion enjoyed a major improvement, jumping 13 positions from 2014. Ram and Mitsubishi made big gains, as well, moving up 11 and 10 positions, respectively. In terms of individual segments, GM and Toyota both excelled, taking home seven segment awards each. The study wasn't good news for all involved, though. A number of popular automakers finished below the industry average of 147 problems per 100 vehicles, including Subaru, (157PP100), Volkswagen (165PP100), Ford/Hyundai (188PP100 each) and Mini (193PP100). The biggest losers (by a tremendous margin, we might add) were Land Rover and Fiat, recording 258 and 273 problems per 100 vehicles. The next closest brand was Jeep, with 197PP100. While the Vehicle Dependability Study uses the same measurement system as the Initial Quality Survey, the two metrics analyze very different things. The VDS looks at problems experienced by original owners of model year 2012 vehicles over the past 12 months, while the oft-quoted IQS focuses on problems in the first 90 days of new-vehicle ownership. Like the IQS, though, the VDS has a rather broad definition of what a problem is. Because of that, a low score from JD Power is no guarantee of extreme unreliability, so much as just poor design. In this most recent study, the two most reported problems focused on Bluetooth connectivity and the voice-command systems. The former leaves plenty of room for user error due to poor design (particularly true of the Bluetooth systems on the low-scoring Fords, Volkswagens and Subarus), while the second is something JD Power has already confirmed as being universally terrible. That makes means that while these studies are important, they shouldn't be taken as gospel when it comes to automotive reliability. News Source: JD PowerImage Credit: Copyright 2015 Jeremy Korzeniewski / AOL Buick Fiat Ford GM Hyundai Jeep Land Rover Lexus MINI Mitsubishi RAM Scion Subaru Toyota Volkswagen Auto Repair Ownership study