One need only look at the trucks that came before the 1994 Ram, and the ones that came after it to see the paradigm-shift in truck design.  Prior trucks were boxes with boxes out back.  Slab-sided fenders and rectilinear shapes abounded.  The overall air was stern and austere.  The only nods to styling to be found were varying amounts of chrome in the grille, and perhaps a stepside bed for that vintage feel. This was especially true for Dodge, whose Ram was also the oldest design on the market by 1993.  Though the Ram name dated only to 1981, the body was essentially a lightly-refreshed version of what had been introduced in 1972.

Designers at Dodge recognized a need for drastic change.  Sales of their full-size trucks had dropped to less than 100,000 units by the early 90’s.  Given how thoroughly entrenched the pickup market is, drastic new sales were unlikely to be drawn from the competition, so more sales from outside the traditional truck market were needed.

To that end, Dodge decided to be daring with the new Ram’s style.  For the first time, a light-duty pickup was being designed to evoke images of something – specifically, vintage big-rigs and post-war Power-Wagons.  In place of flat fenders you got bulging, stepped ones.  At the front there was a daring prow tapering back in a very carlike fashion to each side.  Centering it all was a very in-your-face crosshair grille.  Even the rear fenders got testosterone-fueled bulges.  Buyers were supposed to feel like they were piloting their very own big-rig.

The market certainly bought it.  Sales skyrocketed – more than tripling in the first year of the new Ram’s life – once the runt of the pickup truck sales figures, the Ram found itself the darling of new truck sales.  Suddenly, people were buying Rams not because they needed a truck, but because they wanted a truck.  Away from cattle ranches and job sites, Dodge pickups were increasingly finding their way to suburbia – doing duty as mundane daily-drivers, rather than beasts of burden.

However, the 1994 Ram’s influence extended beyond sales.  It changed the truck industry.  Ford were first to react in 1997 with their daringly wind-swept F-150.  It too eschewed a purely functional form for a dramatic set of duds.  A more ergonomic, carlike interior showed up as well.  GM were slower to react and more conservative, but by 1999 they had shaved the edges off the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado, and while the outside shape may have been a more conservative reaction to the newfound styling wave, the inside was notably carlike – at least by the standards of the day.

It’s rare for one vehicle to make such an impact so quickly.  The 1994 Ram changed the way consumers and carmakers alike thought about trucks.  Thanks to an increased emphasis on style, we wound up with the truck market we have today, where the average buyer can be expected to haul little more than air on a daily basis, and where the look of a truck drives the sale.

The post 1994 Dodge Ram – Lifestyle Trailblazer appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Allow me to introduce you to the Mercedes R-class.  I know, I know.  It’s not in production anymore, you’ll have to buy used.  That’s fine.  Your relatives will think you’re especially frugal for letting someone else take the initial depreciation hit.  No, it’s not a minivan, so don’t worry about soccer-mom stigma (the three-pointed star mostly wards that off anyway).  I know it’s not pretty, but it’s got enough going for it that the looks don’t matter.  I mean, it’s not Pontiac Aztek ugly, either.  Besides, you don’t have to look at the exterior when you’re driving it.

For starters, it seats six people in S-Class luxury.  At some point between Halloween and New Year’s Day you will be asked to ferry co-workers, friends, relatives, or even in-laws around.  This time of the year is stressful enough without packing them sardine-like into the back seat of a Camry.  This is your chance to be Johnny-on-the-spot with a people-mover.  That the people-mover in question has nice leather seats and Mercedes’ vault-like isolation is icing on the cake.  If all else fails, your passengers will at least be impressed by the badge.  And no, you don’t want to roll up to your in-laws house in an Escalade, they might find the over-abundance of chrome a bit tacky.

Even if your people-hauling opportunity never arises, the space will still come in handy for those inevitable shopping trips.  It really doesn’t matter what you’re buying, the big Merc has space for it.  Just remember when you’re sizing up potential Christmas trees: just because there’s room for it in your R-class, doesn’t mean there’s room for it in your house.

Sure, you could enlist a minivan for this sort of thing, but for many of you, the weather this time of year presents its own special challenges.  The R-Class is widely available with AWD.  No need for boulder-hopping 4×4 stuff here – you’re not tackling the Rubicon Trail, just snow, sleet, and whatever else Mother Nature has up her sleeves.  A full-size SUV would be wasteful.

At this point, all that’s left is to choose what flavor of R-class you would like.  You’re spoiled here.  Mercedes offered more varieties than Baskin-Robbins.  Early models could be had with the 5.0L V8 – ultimate wafting power there.  If you can’t stomach the fuel bills, V6s were available, too.  They actually dominated sales, so finding one that’s just right shouldn’t be hard.  Of course, if you fancy the ultimate road-trip machine, you can even have a diesel R-class – you’ll be limited by the range of your bladder before you run out of fuel.  My personal choice would be the R63 AMG version.  You’ve been sensible with the rest of the vehicle, why not treat yourself to the snarling hand-built V8?  Boredom will not be a problem.  As an added bonus, the AMG goes nicely with the patriotic summer holidays.

Yes, the R-class.  It’s an impressive, comfortable, capable, frugal or ridiculous Swiss-Army knife.  It’s the perfect car for any holiday, and a sweet piece for all the other days of the year too.  If it had been styled better, we might all be driving one already.

The post Mercedes R-Class: Perfect Holiday Car appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

The good folks over at American Motors Corporation (AMC) first got to SUVs as they would come to be known. Sure, SUV-like things had been around for a while. The Suburban name has been in GM’s catalog since the 1930’s. Two-door runabouts had flourished at the fringes of the market too – think Ford Bronco, Toyota Land Cruiser, Jeep CJ, etc. But in the early 1980’s, AMC had something different up their sleeves. It had four doors like a Suburban, but in a more wieldy size. An innovative unitized frame lowered the height and weight of the vehicle, negating the need for a gas-guzzling V8. Then there was the styling. In place of the aggressive machismo of a Ford Bronco or Jeep Wagoneer you had simple clean lines that met at slightly boxy angles (it was the early 1980s, after all. Aerodynamic bubble-cars were still a few years over the horizon). AMC called it the Cherokee – or XJ, if you’re really geeky about Jeeps.

When the Cherokee debuted, it was not quite the sales phenomenon Ford would later have with the Explorer. Like many good things in life, the Cherokee was an acquired taste for the market. To be fair, the Cherokee wasn’t really like any previous Jeep, or any other passenger-carrying truck that came before it. Mud-bogging enthusiasts viewed it as tiny, and since it lacked a V8 – a bit wimpy. It was the original Mall Finder. There may be some truth to that. The Cherokee definitely makes a better on-road companion than a K5 Blazer or full-size Bronco.

However, the Cherokee had a few things going for it in terms of back-country antics. It was more maneuverable than the full-size rigs of the time (handy when you’re squeezing down narrow trails). While the unitized frame might not have the boulder-bashing tenacity of a truck’s separate frame, it’s a lot lighter. Cherokees don’t get swallowed by the Earth nearly as easily as a lot of larger trucks. When Chrysler bought out AMC in the late ‘80s, the Cherokee got a much-needed infusion of muscle courtesy of a 4.0L straight-six engine also included in the AMC deal. Sophisticated that six-cylinder was not, but it had torque in spades, and a decent rush of power too. While not fast in a world of the BMW X5 M or Porsche Cayenne Turbo, by the early 1990s, the Cherokee could move. Add to that a pair of sturdy and articulate solid axles and Mom’s Mall-Finder could also get you pretty much anywhere you would want to go by vehicle.

Finally, there was the styling. Ignore the presence of fake wood on the sides of some early Cherokees. What you’re left with actually rather handsome. The look is clean and honest. The greenhouse is airy, and well proportioned. It was such a nice shape that Chrysler/AMC were able to justify keeping it around all the way to 2001. Not bad for a vehicle that was introduced in 1984. I think it rightfully qualifies as an icon.

The post How The Jeep Cherokee Changed SUVs appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s a boring front-wheel drive jellybean from (and for) middle-America. It looks like every other boring, front-wheel drive sedan. It hardly stands out. It could just as easily wear a Chevy badge, or the Chrysler Pentastar. Or even a badge from Japan.

However, that sentiment ignores that the Taurus got there first.  It dared to stand apart from the 80’s crowd of anonymous boxes. It had curves.  It had no traditional grille – it fed air into the engine bay primarily from the bottom of the front bumper. The front and rear bumpers stuck close to the body – rather than posing as chrome beams hung from either end of the car. The headlights were flush with the body, and even the interior took a radical step towards modern ergonomic standards. Rather than scattering controls across the dashboard, everything was placed in a way that would be quickly reachable to the driver – and easily identifiable.

Look at the Taurus’ domestic competition at its launch in 1985. Over in the Chrysler stable you had the K-car derived Dodge 600. Its sole nod to modernity was front-wheel drive. It was still a box on the outside – four square headlights in their boxy little holes flanking a rectilinear grille that was more mechanical tradition than actual function. It wasn’t until the release of the Intrepid  in 1993 that Chrysler finally started buying what Ford designs were selling to consumers by the truckload.

General Motors was not much better. In the midsize category you had the A-body cars such as the Chevrolet Celebrity and Pontiac 6000. They also dared to be front-wheel drive. That’s the only thing you could call daring in the GM designs. My grandmother had a Celebrity wagon. I distinctly remember knowing it was a bit sad even before I could count to ten on all my fingers.

Even the Japanese – who would come to be known for brutally aerodynamic anon-O-boxes in the 90’s – were peddling boxes. They were just better built ones. A 1980’s Camry or Accord is a study in straight lines and crisp angles. They look starched.

Needless to say, when the Taurus came along, feathers were ruffled. Consumers seemed to see what Ford was getting at, though. They bought them in droves. It was this very success that sealed the Taurus’ long slide into anonymity though. Even on their heels, the competition weren’t going to let Ford run away with the Taurus like they had with the original Mustang. Within five years the boxes were gone, and aerodynamic jellybeans were in. GM unleashed the Lumina, and Chrysler was working on the cab-forward wedge that was to become the Intrepid. By 1989, Honda had sanded the edges off the Accord, and Toyota was giving the Camry a Taurus-like form-fitting skin.

Within a decade, the Taurus was just another jellybean in the mid-size sedan candy jar. Ford would wait until 1996 for another dramatic Taurus, but lightning was not to strike twice, and Ford has so far shied away from the sort of daring Taurus design that distinguished the original. Perhaps they were too busy looking into their crystal ball and coming up with the Explorer. That’s a story for another time.

The post The Daringly Different Ford Taurus appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

Part of my insane reasoning was the very shabby nature of the truck.  I have visions in my head of my friend and I whiling away hours in the back yard hunched over the front of the Ford, making noises of agreement and generally pointing at things, and then fixing them.  So maybe I just want to feel manly by getting my hands dirty.

Not hurting matters was that I got the truck for less than the cost of a new iPhone and data plan to match.  Purely from a dollars-per-pound perspective it’s a lot of metal for the money.   That it comes with a big-block V8 is just icing on the insanity-cake.  I’m drunk on visions of torque – fuel bills be damned!  That said, I’m not the only person to lose their mind and make a ridiculous vehicle purchase.

The sales numbers are quite telling.  Apparently a lot of us have lost our minds in a very similar way, as the Ford F-series has been not only the best-selling truck, but the best-selling vehicle in America for close to two decades.  You may think this is a Midwest thing, and that Texas is skewing the numbers.  Texans do buy a lot of trucks, and getting a truck stuck in some farmer’s field is almost a rite of passage among teenagers in middle America.  That being said, even in tech-savvy, environmentally-conscious, and responsible Silicon Valley the F-series is still in the top-10 of the sales charts.  There cannot be that many general contractors in the Bay Area, so quite a lot of otherwise normal people are also abandoning common sense and bringing a full-size truck home.

A lot of the appeal lies in the very nature of trucks.  There’s a Swiss Army Knife quality in them that seems to resonate with American ideals of hard work.  We picture ourselves hauling building supplies, moving furniture for friends and family, and towing our toys.  Maybe we’ll engage 4WD and splash in the mud on our way back from said adventures.  We think we’ll become more rugged with a rugged truck.

However, few are ever going to haul enough dirty, bulky crap to justify having a vehicle tailor-made for such things – much less as a daily driver as many people do.  The vast majority of people will never set a tire off the pavement, either.  Some will mumble about inclement weather.  I know this to be a hollow justification.  I grew up in the snow-belt and I can tell you that unless you’re going to attach a plow to it and get into the snow-removal business, a pickup is not a very useful tool for commuting in the white stuff.  The weight-distribution is entirely wrong.  You would be just as well-off with front-wheel drive.

At the end of the day, I guess America’s insatiable appetite for absurd conveyances at the expense of being able to park, or fill up the fuel tank, can only be explained by some sort of mental disorder.  It’s pickup fever, and we as a nation have it bad.  Trucks are the only cure.

The post It’s Pickup Fever appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

You would think this simple ethos would produce straightforward results for automakers.  All one needs to do to build a successful car is to poll what people want, and then build it.  Carmakers aren’t really pollsters, so they typically go the concept car route, and gauge reactions at auto shows.  So, any car that previews well should be a smash hit for its maker, right?  Unfortunately for the car companies, it’s not that easy.

This is a particular problem when the auto-giants try to build a factory hot rod.  One classic example of this is the Chevrolet SSR.  When the concept debuted, crowds went wild for it, and it’s not hard to see why.  It was a retro-styled, hot-rod truck.  It was a baby-boomer’s nostalgic dream on wheels.  It had a fire-breathing V8 engine, classic pontoon fenders, a slick interior, and a retractable hardtop roof.  It was a Mercedes SLK with attitude and a beautifully-finished wood-accented bed out back.  Naturally, GM listened to the hype and quickly set about raiding its corporate parts-bin to build the finished product.

Thanks to its extensive donor parts list, GM was able to move the SSR from concept to production in remarkable time.  They also achieved the rare feat of making a production car look mostly like its concept.  The mundane realities of legal safety requirements did little to alter the SSR’s shape – thanks in large part to its simple, SUV-derived ladder frame.  With the body relieved of structural support duties, the stylists were free to exercise their imagination.

SSRs filtered into GM dealerships, and the salespeople waited, salivating, to beat-back the desperate hordes of SSR buyers.  But the buyers never really appeared.  Away from the dizzying lights of the auto-show circuit, a more harsh reality emerged.  Factory hot-rods are not good investments.

Some were disappointed by the SSRs standard 5.3L V8 from the Chevy Trailblazer.  It’s a perfectly fine engine for workaday duties, but it lacked the poke the mean bodywork seemed to promise.  GM quickly sourced a brawnier V8 from the Corvette, and added a manual transmission to the options list.  It was too little, too late.  Initial shoppers had tainted the SSR with a slow reputation.

The Woodward dream-cruisers didn’t really mind the lack of grunt, but there’s something faintly un-satisfying about seeing classic shapes rendered in contemporary metal and plastic.  There’s also little fun to be had in having GM build your hot-rod for you, rather than doing it yourself.  A few hopeless romantics shelled out for the SSR, but most continued right on buying 50 year-old trucks and building their own “authentic” hot rods.

Then GM had the hardest sell of all – the mainstream buyer.  There are many more people who would love to have a convertible two-seat pickup than can afford to have a convertible, two seat pickup.  At over $41,000 a decade ago, the SSR had a steep price tag.  It’s also difficult to make the practicality sale when your truck’s bed is lined with oh-so-scratchable wood and super-absorbent carpet.  Not helping matters was the hard tonneau cover.  It did make for a secure bed to stash belongings in, but inevitably they will all migrate the front of the bed, where the cover is hinged, making them frustratingly difficult to retrieve.  You can also forget hauling oversized cargo.

Today, we can look back on the SSR as an embarrassing, cynical cash-grab aimed squarely at hopelessly nostalgic buyers, but let us not forget that GM was only giving us exactly what we (and they) thought we wanted.  Be careful what you wish for…

The post The Customer Isn’t Always Right: Chevy SSR appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.