Latest news with #truck
Motor Trend
4 hours ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
It's Official: The Hemi-Powered Ram 1500 Is Back!
'We got it wrong and we're fixing it,' Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis says. What did Ram get wrong? The truck maker nixed the Hemi V-8 option from the redesigned 2025 Ram 1500, making the more powerful and fuel-efficient but less throaty Hurricane twin-turbo inline-six standard. As for fixing it, the Hemi is indeed returning to the menu for the 2026 model year. Order books are now open and trucks with the V-8 option should be on sale this summer. The Hurricane 3.0-liter twin-turbo I-6 will continue to be the standard engine across the majority of the lineup, while the 5.7-liter Hemi becomes a $1,200 option on most trims. It is a no-charge option on the Limited and Longhorn models that had the high-output Hurricane as standard. When Kuniskis returned to head Ram in December, the first thing he was asked was if he was going to bring the Hemi back for truck buyers upset they no longer had that choice. At the time, Kuniskis said he needed to see the data, to see if the falloff in Ram sales was in fact due to dropping the V-8 or if it was the result of a botched launch of the 2025 Ram 1500, whereby the company struggled to get all the various trims to dealers in a timely manner. One factor was the very same plant was also starting to produce the new version of the Ram heavy duty. Today, Ram retail sales are up (overall sales don't look as healthy because the company deliberately pulled back on rental fleet sales). But the Hemi is coming back. 'Data be damned,' Kuniskis says now. It appears this was Kuniskis's plan from day one. He cut short his retirement on December 9 after only six months. 'On December 10 we kicked off the study on how to bring the Hemi back in the Ram as fast as humanly possible.' This Will Not Be Easy The key problem standing the V-8's way was the 2025 Ram 1500 had a new electrical architecture that was not intended to support the Hemi. The initial feedback was that it would take 18 months. A special team was put together, codenamed F15, led by former SRT chief engineer Darryl Smith. Smith worked some kind of magic, reduced the timeline to six months, and trucks with the 5.7-liter will be in dealerships this summer. There is extra cost involved, but it is nominal. Contracts had to be renegotiated and there are compliance issues, all of which explains the additional $1,200 cost, Kuniskis says. Which Ram Trucks Get the Hemi? The 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 puts out 395 horsepower and 410 lb-ft of torque (the standard output Hurricane I-6 generates 420 hp and 469 lb-ft of torque; the high-output version is good for 540 hp and 521 lb-ft). Towing capacity maxes out at 11,470 pounds and maximum payload capacity is 1,750 pounds. The Hemi will be offered in the 2026 Ram 1500 Tradesman, Big Horn/Lone Star, Express, Warlock, Laramie, Limited, and Longhorn. It will come a bit later to the off-road Rebel, a delay needed to accommodate some of that truck's unique features. And the Hemi, which will feature the eTorque mild hybrid system, will come with the sport exhaust standard. Noticeably absent: the off-road performance RHO and the luxurious Tungsten models, which rely on the higher-performance high-output Hurricane as standard. Could it be added to the RHO later? 'I'm not sure,' Kuniskis says. 'It's a 'for sure' I want to do it, but it's not a 'for sure' that it's a good idea.' And what about a supercharged TRX, the powerful truck that went head-to-head with the Ford F-150 Raptor R until it was discontinued after the 2024 model year? Ram loves vehicles like the TRX but it is a tiny fraction of overall sales. 'Will we ever get back to a TRX? We'll see,' Kuniskis tells us. These are all things Ram is working on, or at least looking at, but Kuniskis is not sure the 5.7-liter provides enough performance to meet customer expectations in these top end models. 'I'm not saying we won't do it, but that's what I am thinking about it right now.' Speaking of the TRX, specifically bringing back the supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi is not a viable option. It is really bad for compliance and yields very few sales, says the Ram boss. Nor is it easy to do because it has never been incorporated into the new Ram 1500 electrical architecture so all electronics and modules and connections are different. The workaround to accommodate the 5.7-liter Hemi is courtesy of the Jeep Wagoneer family, an SUV that uses a version of the same architecture as the body-on-frame trucks but was engineered for the 5.7-liter Hemi with its mild eTorque hybrid system—so no additional calibration was needed. The eTorque system replaces the traditional engine-mounted alternator with a belt-driven motor generator unit. The motor generator unit works with a 48-volt battery pack for stop-start, adding torque in certain driving situations, and regenerative braking. The system enables up to 130 lb.-ft. of torque to be available on initial throttle tip-in. The Jeep became the enabler. 'Instead of going from one architecture to a new architecture, we went to a different version of that same architecture which made it possible to do in six months,' Kuniskis said. 'But putting a 6.2-liter in there would be a whole different animal.' New Day, New Hemi Logo The old Hemi logo will not return. The new one, dubbed the 'Symbol of Protest' is a V-8 engine block with exaggerated exhaust pipes and a Ram's head. The badge will be on all V-8 trucks' front fenders. Kuniskis thinks the take rate for the Hemi will be in the 25 to 40 percent range with dealers ordering probably too many initially. Demand will then level off but stay higher than at Ford, for example, where 25 percent opt for a V-8 in their F-150s. Ram should have a higher take rate because the Hemi is a well-known name and because there are many loyalists who will buy it for the sound alone, he says. 'Nothing beats the cold start of a Hemi,' said Mark Trostle, senior vice president of Mopar and Ram exterior design.
The Drive
28-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
The Owner of This 4-Million-Mile Kenworth Made Some Smart Mods Along the Way
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Truck owner and operator Alan Kitzhaber has a 1995 Kenworth T600 with more than four million miles on it. Of course, it wasn't always easy. Kitzhaber has regularly repaired his truck over its 30-year life and made a host of modifications, not only to keep it running but also to prevent previous problems from recurring. It's been a labor of love, all things considered. 'Diligent maintenance goes a long way to keep that truck going,' Kitzhaber told Overdrive Magazine in this recent video. But Kitzhaber has done far more than the routine, preventative maintenance. Wherever the truck struggled or failed, he came up with a fix. For instance, the Wisconsin winters Kitzhaber often faces can gel up even the most thoroughly treated diesel fuel. That's why he installed an Arctic Fox fuel heater, which not only helps his truck start every time but also increases the life of the engine. That engine in question is a Caterpillar 3406E engine with 550 horsepower. And while it's 30 years old, it has been serviced and 'overhauled' three times by Caterpillar. Still, it's the original power unit, and it has 4.1 million miles on it. While the engine itself is mostly unmodified, he's done a lot to make its life easier. For example, he upgraded from the standard 13-speed manual transmission to one with two overdrives, thus keeping the engine more relaxed while cruising at higher speeds. He also went from a dual-drive axle to a single-drive axle, making the rearmost axle a tag. That not only shaved 1,200 pounds from the entire rig, but it also reduced drivetrain loss, resulting in less strain on the engine and improved fuel economy. The Airdog filter helps to remove air from the fuel, too. Alan Kitzhaber with his truck. Overdrive Magazine via YouTube One of the biggest improvements Kitzhaber made was the tire pressure monitoring system, which consists of special air sensor valve stem caps that send tire pressure info to a single control unit in the cabin. 'I can't tell you the number of times that has really paid off,' Kitzhaber told Caterpillar. 'You're able to pull over to the side of the road and get it fixed before you have a catastrophic failure.' The most visible modification is the massive front bumper guard, which has saved his truck from four deer strikes so far. Four prevented deer strikes means Kitzhaber didn't have to pay to replace four hoods, radiators, or anything else that would have broken from hitting a deer at speed. Also, he didn't have to worry about the downtime, either. Kitzhaber never intended to make a 30-year commitment to a truck, or even make a career out of driving one. But some time ago, while in between jobs, he saw an ad that said 'Drive a truck. See the country.' He thought he'd do that for a few years; however, 33 years and more than four million miles later, Kitzhaber is still behind the wheel of a truck, and seemingly neither wants to give up on each other. Whenever someone takes a Honda or Toyota to one million miles, the car company usually gives the owner a brand-new car. What's Kenworth gonna do, buy Kitzhaber a house? I kid, I kid. Got tips? Send 'em to tips@
The Drive
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
2025 Ford F-350 Platinum Plus Review: So This Is What Six Figures Gets You
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Over the past two model years, Ford's truck marketers pulled a subtle switcheroo right before our eyes. After carrying the banner for the company's range-topping truck models, the Limited trim was officially put out to pasture, paving the way for a new, two-tiered nomenclature. All hail Platinum, and its new superior, Platinum Plus. On paper, it adds just $6,500 to the 2025 F-350's purchase price, but if you peep the fine print, you'll notice that the high-output diesel (500 horsepower; 1,200 lb-ft of torque) is a mandatory inclusion with Platinum Plus—as is virtually everything else, including four-wheel drive. Our test truck's window sticker showed $27,820 in optional equipment, and $19,495 of that was mandatory with Platinum Plus. You can drive the price up even further with more accessories, but at this point, you've basically run out of packages to throw at it. Outside, the Platinum Plus gets a unique satin exterior trim finish, its own special set of 20-inch wheels, and a handful of popular add-ons, including the 2-kW version of Ford's Pro Power Onboard generator and a twin-panel power sunroof. The interior lacks the panache you get from a Lincoln, but the materials are impressive for a dually. There's French-stitched leather on the seats, doors, and dash; even the grab handles feature cowhide. The A-pillars contrast that with suede interior trim. There's only one color option for the cabin so far—the 'Smoked Truffle' brown shown here—and it's a welcoming shade that might even hide a little workday grime, should you be inclined to get your Super Duty dirty. And that's precisely what I intended to do, after reassuring Ford multiple times that I would return it no worse for wear. I can forgive Ford for being a bit precious about its six-figure land yacht. After all, most auto journos aren't really truck people, so there's always the chance that we vastly overestimate the truck (or ourselves), the results of which can range from cringey to disastrous. But when in doubt, there's always yard work. The running joke among those of us who do this sort of thing for a living is that we inevitably use press trucks to buy mulch. Like a moth to a flame (or perhaps more appropriately, a scribe to a shrimp buffet), I was on the phone to my local landscaping supplier before I'd even finished scheduling the loan. To be fair, it's a fairly simple and consistent test, and apart from towing a lawn mower, one of the few real-world uses people can commonly relate to. A cubic yard of it weighs between a quarter and half a ton—handily similar to the way payload capacities are marketed—and you can get it just about anywhere. And unlike some other easily sourced bulk materials, it's not likely to beat the hell out of a truck bed. Trope — 1 Byron — 0 Two things, though. For starters, this isn't some work-truck-spec pickup with a hose-down interior. This is a $100,000 luxury model with high-quality leather and nice, carpeted floor mats. Bulk mulch is just decomposing wood, and while it may not ding the paint, it can certainly make a mess. And the second thing? Well, this an F-350 dually. Eight foot bed or not, to overload this thing with mulch, it would have to be mixed with molten lead. So while the visuals may be satisfying, it's not all that much of a test. But hey, I was committed. With two yards in the bed, I fired up the Super Duty's Onboard Scales app to see how much of its 4,947-pound payload capacity I'd eaten up. It showed about 30%, or somewhere between 1,500 and 1,700 pounds. I could have fit another yard in there with the tarp to account for it mounding above the bed line, but another ~800 pounds will only just get me halfway to the F-350's capacity. If I was going to push this truck to its limit, I'd need something far more substantial. I pondered that on my brief drive home. Even with the bed tarped, I opted for side streets, stretching the one-and-a-half-mile trip from its usual three minutes to a leisurely five. My house is nestled in the urban-adjacent grid of Detroit's inner suburbs, and the F-350 feels conspicuously wide on most of these two-lanes. With just shy of half an acre, I have more room to maneuver than most of my neighbors, but even that isn't quite enough for the Super Duty. This thing is just big—more than 22 feet long and nearly nine feet wide at the mirrors—and while rear-wheel drive typically allows trucks a tighter turning circle than their length might otherwise suggest, the dual-wheel rear axle throws that whole notion right out the window. Maneuvering this thing is a deliberate process, especially if you're trying to avoid digging huge divots in your grass. Fortunately, Ford offers some quality-of-life features that make it a bit less nerve-racking. Loaded as it is, the Platinum Plus comes with Ford's 360-degree camera system, which earned its keep beautifully as I threaded the truck around freshly planted landscaping. And suddenly, right there in the infotainment screen, the perfect payload test appeared. You might say it hit me like a ton of bricks, but technically, it was more than two tons. This pallet of solid 8x4x16 concrete blocks was generously left behind by my home's previous custodian. I've tried to foist them off on neighbors and random internet landscapers more than once, but in the end, it's always the same story: they're just too heavy to be worth the trouble. There are 138 of them in there, each weighing approximately 33 pounds dry. Bumping that up by a pound to allow for the fact that many near the bottom were borderline waterlogged, we get a total of just under 4,700 pounds—way too much for a typical utility trailer, but still almost 250 pounds short of the F-350's ultimate capacity. Bingo. On paper, the truck can do it. But there's just one problem: I have to load them in there somehow, and unlike mulch, concrete blocks will indeed beat up a truck bed. With the tarp still in place, I put down a piece of scrap 4×8 plywood to protect the bed and tailgate, then set about loading nearly 150 solid blocks of concrete into the back of the Super Duty, by hand, one by one. I was careful not to let any of them careen into the wheel arches as I muscled them into place, periodically checking in with Onboard Scales to make sure everything was going to plan. It was. Just over an hour and a couple of bottles of water later, I had successfully loaded the full pallet into the F-350. Pulling up Onboard Scales, I saw that my math was overly conservative. Even adjusting for the fact that I never corrected the 150-pound passenger offset to reflect my own healthy curb weight, we had at least a few hundred pounds of headroom. After unloading the concrete, I gave the F-350 a thorough hose-down, and was again struck by its size. The bed alone is big enough to have its own zip code, and at five-foot-eight, I often had to use the various steps and other accessibility features just to see far enough into the bed to confirm I was actually spraying the thing I intended to spray. While stretching sore muscles, I caught myself eyeballing the rough framing of what will eventually become my new garage, and was reminded that I have Ford to thank for helping me plan it in the first place. Since my township puts a hard cap on the allowed square footage for a private garage, I faced a difficult design decision: Did I want a three-car garage deep enough to fit most typical passenger cars, or did I want a two-car garage deep enough to fit literally anything? And when it came time to define 'literally anything,' I used the Super Duty's dimensions as the bare minimum. As you can see, quantity won out in the end. Hey, we're a four-car household. Something's gotta give. Still, I was curious. I had to keep the Super Duty's massive side mirrors deployed so I could guide the nearly equally wide rear fenders between the posts at the far side. See, this slab is only 22 feet deep. I already know the F-350 is too long to fit between its future walls, but the mirrors should clear the rough framing of the nine-foot door openings. And they did, at their innermost position, with less than half an inch of breathing room on either side. Phew. The latest car news, reviews, and features. Awkward though it may be at times, it's really easy to love the Super Duty in this environment. Heck, I got more work done in the three days I spent in the yard with that Ford than I did in three weeks of man-powered cleanup last fall. It's like a near-infinite force multiplier; the more you throw at it, the more effortless it makes it seem. But elsewhere, this comes at a cost—literally, considering it will set you back six figures—but also figuratively. A lot of urban parking options are simply off-limits to a truck this big, and even some venues that are accustomed to truck traffic can't accommodate something of this size. My local nursery, which is set up to serve shoppers buying pallets of bagged landscaping materials, didn't have parking spots long enough to fit the Super Duty. And then there's the cabin. Hoo-boy, is it nice. It's still somewhat incongruous to open the door of a heavy-duty pickup truck and see the sort of interior you'd expect in a well-equipped Expedition, but it certainly pampers. If you're looking for a supple ride, we'd steer you toward a single-rear-wheel model without the FX4 package. The off-road dually is borderline skittish on rough surfaces, and downright unpleasant on broken ones. The stump-pulling torque of the high-output Power Stroke can also easily overpower the rear axle from a stop while the bed's unloaded, which saps most of the potential fun out of that big diesel's torque figure. That said, it's really hard to complain about this thing, but for this kinda scratch, that should darn well be the case. If you'd like some nits picked, the absence of BlueCruise is conspicuous at this price point. Self-driving-adjacent tech really isn't my cup of tea, personally, but losing that option in the upgrade from F-150 to Super Duty still stings. And like GM's Super Cruise, it's actually good at what it does. Being good at things is kind of the whole point of a Super Duty. Heavy-duty pickups have developed a bit of a blue-collar-BMW reputation of late, and Platinum Plus certainly won't do anything to change that perception, but for trucks like this, the cachet is all in the capability. Like a Bentley or Rolls-Royce, a high-end truck doesn't actually need to prove anything. It's the capability that counts. And going back to the subject of GM, we can't help but sniff a bit of Denali/Denali Ultimate in Ford's new two-tiered strategy. The two years of included maintenance is certainly a nice perk, and it even comes with direct, one-to-one texting support for your vehicle. Need help with something? Just reach out. And every Platinum Plus comes with a little gift welcoming you to the Ford Family—a nice little engraved cedar box with some additional literature and a branded cloth for cleaning the F-350's enormous screen. I may not quite be sold on six-figure pickup trucks, but if there's any consolation here, it's the fact that a truck like this can do just about anything. Five-thousand pounds in the bed is nothing to sneeze at, and with a different axle (this one came with 3:55s), you can put a 35,900-pound load behind this thing—you need the F-450 (Platinum Plus starting at $103,535) to do measurably better. That's nuts . But then again, so is this truck's $111,000 price tag. 2025 Ford F-350 Platinum Plus Specs Base Price (as tested) $81,395 ($111,310) Powertrain 6.7-liter diesel V8 | 10-speed automatic | 4-wheel drive Horsepower 500 Torque 1,200 lb-ft Seating Capacity 5 Max Towing 31,800 pounds (35,900 pounds with 4.10:1 rear axle) Max Payload 4,947 pounds Bed Length 8 ft Score 8/10 A ridiculous truck with a ridiculous price and go-anywhere, do-anything utility. I'll pass on the dually, though, thanks. Got tips? Send 'em in to: tips@ Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Boy, 6, killed and three injured after nightmare crash in NSW Far South Coast
A six-year-old boy has been killed in a two-vehicle crash on a rural road, which injured three others. A dual-cab ute and a truck collided on Towamba Rd, Nullica, on New South Wales ' Far South Coast, about 4.10pm on Tuesday. The young boy, who had been travelling in the ute, died at the scene. The 30-year-old male driver of the ute and his three-year-old female passenger also suffered multiple injuries. The pair were airlifted to hospital. A third passenger in the ute, an eight-year-old girl, was taken to South-East Regional Hospital at Bega. The truck driver, believed to be in his 50s, was taken to hospital for mandatory testing. He was also treated for the effects of shock. Crash investigators examined the scene on Tuesday night, and Towamba Road remained closed for several hours. Police urged anyone who witnessed the collision to make a report via Crime Stoppers.
The Verge
12-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Verge
paintless, affordable EV pickup truck
Slate's cheap EV truck has already hit 100,000 reservations. The started taking reservations just over two weeks ago and crossed the 100,000 mark this past weekend, reports TechCrunch. It's a good showing, though as the outlet notes, Slate Auto is only asking $50, and reservations are fully refundable.
