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So since midish 08 I have been rolling around in a 05 dodge ram first one was a 1500 singe cab short bed with a 4.7 2wd turd. I upgraded to a 05 2500 quad cab short bed 4wd with a 5.9 cummins (tuned) bad ass. I have been rolling in that beast for five years now. Reality has smashed me in the nose, I didnt take to the subtle hints, so its time to sell Big Pig off and get a family car, this sucks. I have to keep payments low so its cheap and new or cheap and old. Looking for something Chrysler 200 300, ford Taurus, dodge charger size car, I personally want a dart but the wife isnt totally on board with that needs to be a bit larger as her kia rio is about the same size.

Any recommendations from personal experiences or ride alongs with other?

IMG_20150102_141035284 by Matthew Troiano, on Flickr

IMG_20141226_173454509 by Matthew Troiano, on Flickr

IMG_20141025_154108139_HDR by Matthew Troiano, on Flickr

Our son bought one of the early four banger, five speed Fusions. Helluva nice car.

Bill

We are considering everything but leaning to SUV like a traverse or terrain. Will look into a fusion though. Might down size the fleet to one for a while to assist in getting out of debt but that is a whole other matter. Having close to 600 a month to pay off everything will go a long way in short order.

How about a Dodge Magnum, the sport wagon built on the Chysler 300 chassis. Station wagon for 'Mom', up to 'Hemi' powerplant for 'Dad'! Full independent suspension, and AWD available. Could be fun.

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Mike - Read my story at http://twinlakesseven.blogspot.com/

Dodge Nitro. True truck chassis with a comfortable SUV body. Real 4WD that you control. 4.0 motor has huge power. Great towing capacity. Not a lot of them on the street so you don't look like your neighbor if that matters to you. Reasonably priced for good ones around here, don't know about your area. It's the poor man's G Class Mercedes.

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Two good options, if I had to go Chrysler I really want a 300 its self. Towing would be a big plus as I have a dirtbike and my brother and I share ownership of dads boat. His bagged dakota in the pic isnt up to that task of towing reliably. We intend to fix that soon.

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Nitro/Liberty chassis, stay the hell away from the 3.7. If you are going after one, make sure its a 4.0, and make sure you actually get into it every once in a while. the downfall of those motors is actually the transmission. In the interest of fuel economy, they programmed them to shift early, and by doing this, the motors rarely revved high enough to rotate the valves. subsequently, this caused deposits on the valves and would lead to needing a valve job after 100k miles or so. the 4.0, is much less susceptible to this for god knows what reason, but it isn't.

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Tucker

Not to drag this too far off topic but this looks like a great opportunity to ask something that's been bugging me lately about full sized pickups. Why are they SOOOO much larger in the grill/hood than they used to be? I realize that the two shown above may not be an apples to apples comparison but it seems that in the last 10 years the front grill of all full sized pickups have gotten HUGE! Is that really all filled with radiator and engine bits?

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-Keith

A lot of it actually has to do with crash test safety ratings. raising the belt line of vehicles has drastically reduced fatalities in car crashes, as it puts you more "in" the car, rather than "on" it. The other thing that contributes to this is who companies are targeting. something like 84% of pick up truck ownership in the US is attributed to working class men (men that make less than $50k/year). That's what focus groups have shown sells better, so there ya go!

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Tucker

A lot of it actually has to do with crash test safety ratings. raising the belt line of vehicles has drastically reduced fatalities in car crashes, as it puts you more "in" the car, rather than "on" it. The other thing that contributes to this is who companies are targeting. something like 84% of pick up truck ownership in the US is attributed to working class men (men that make less than $50k/year). That's what focus groups have shown sells better, so there ya go!

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Tucker

Grill growth is a function of marketing. This is based on peoples' (at least a statistically significant proportion of them) perceptions that bad-ass trucks have big grills like big rigs.

If you've noticed grills on big-three show vehicles over the years, they're often even more extreme. RAM started this trend in actual product. At the time, one of their marketing honchos noted that it was controversial with half the public loving them and half the public hating them. But, he noted, appealing strongly to half the public would significantly grow their market share (which was abysmal at the time). It worked. Anyone who doesn't like the great grill look needs to blame the tastes of your fellow mother-truckers.

Grills generally aren't part of the crash structure. In fact, one of the pickup-related road safety issues is keeping the bumper and other crash structure bits and bobs low enough to engage same on automobiles.

As a side note, for a while stylists were ridding cars of their grills. That reached its height when Infinity first came to market, with a grill-less sedan. The market rejected it, which slowed Infinity's growth for years. The rest of the automakers saw this, and responded by growing their grills. If you look at the grills on a new car, many of them have sections that are fake. That is, they look like a grill, but the dark areas are black plastic, and simply serve as a faring to push air over the top of the car. I haven't looked closely at truck grills for a while, but wouldn't be surprised to see the same.

Carry on.

On my truck the intercooler is roughly from the top of the grille to the bottom on the steel bumper not the valance. The radiator behind it is about the same size. So it serves some function but mostly form.

I will keep that in mind 1055 thanks.

Why the huge grilles? Why are most /34 ton Diesel pickups used as one passenger car? Easy peasy. Their owners like to think they are bad ass. Look no further than the "Guts. Glory. Ram." commercials. Like, a real man is not going to drive a dickless minivan. Hell, soccer moms don't want to. Gotta be at least an SUV.

Its all marketing and self perception.

Bill

I learned to drive in a Sienna. When my mom moved to texas, she left it to me. Still one of the best cars I ever owned. So practical, decent on gas and nothing ever went wrong with it. wicked comfortable on road trips, and plenty of space for whatever needed to happen out back!

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Tucker

We picked up a 2007 Fusion a few years back for pretty cheap. So far it's a pretty solid car. Ours is the v6, awd model, so it's also a slushbox, but it does work good in the snow. And the awd system sends enough power to the rear that you can slide it around properly in the snow. Even with the traction control still on you can do about 3/4 of a donut before the nanny stops you. I've used it to pull a small trailer (1000-1500 lbs) several times and it does great, even on long highway trips when you're trying to make good time. You can also get a set of cross country skis in it and still use the back seat, plus it has a huge trunk, with hinges that don't intrude on the trunk space. My wife and I both wish it had a standard transmission, but that's about the only gripe. The newer ones with the Aston Martin grill look pretty cool too.
Kristian

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V6 in a book frame build. Now registered.
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