CarSeekBlog

Automakers are having to work hard to make a truck or an SUV look like a good purchase in the face of $4 a gallon gas. The 2009 Dodge Ram is promising to play nice at the pump and the company swears the two models coming in 2010 will have all the fuel efficient street cred a driver could want.

The 2009 still has a Hemi engine, but they’ve taken it back to the bench and added fuel saving variable valve timing for peak efficiency. Similar modifications to the cylinder cutoff system open up the rpm range. Better compression, better air and fuel flow — all equal better performance. (And they worked on the aerodynamics.) As opposed to the 2008s, you’re looking a 4% better fuel economy. No mpg estimates released, but Chrysler did point to improved horsepower up to 390 and a zero to sixty leap in six seconds.

At the same time the company confirmed a hybrid of the Ram with a two-mode gasoline-electric power train. That one is going for a 40 percent gain in fuel economy in town and a 25 percent improvement on the highway. Now those are numbers headed in the right direction. As for right now, in 2008, the Ram is getting 13 mpg in town and 19 on the highway — numbers that are just not going to cut it in the new reality of high fuel costs and deep set environmental concerns.

Filed under: Dodge, New & Notable by Shorty