Dodge and Ford pickup the pace

It used to be after a redesigned pickup truck was introduced, it would remain basically unchanged for years and years. (Well, there would be the occasional "Pace Truck" edition, or a new hubcap design or two.)

But the first two press conferences Sunday saw two major truck freshenings—the Ford F-150 (newly designed in 2004) and the Dodge Ram (new in 2002, mild update in 2006)—back-to-back. It's a much more dynamic and competitive market than it used to be, with Toyota now selling the finally-full-sized Tundra and Nissan's oft-overlooked Titan.

Competition in this segment is positive because it brings some great innovations and advancements. For example, Dodge is now moving to coil-spring rear suspensions. Both Ford and Dodge showed clever truck bed conveniences and their trucks will have standard stability control. We're also seeing improved fuel economy accompanying more power and diesel light-duty trucks, including an announcement from Toyota that the Tundra and Sequoia will get a diesel. That's the news.

But there was some humor in how Dodge and Ford introduced their trucks (if you exclude the plethora of broken press embargos). Dodge held its press conference for the freshened Ram 1500 outside. (The bleachers were, thankfully, heated.) To tempt journalists outside, they handed out beef jerky. Problem was, to get back inside the show hall, you needed to have your bag checked by sniffing police dogs the size of Mini Coopers. It's quite a challenge for those trained dogs to resist thousands of packets of jerky...

There was another good reason Dodge held its press conference outside: a herd of cattle arrived to play up the working side of the Ram. (No sheep though... you know, "Ram" tough?) Jim Press, Chrysler's new president, learned that one should never work with infants or animals since they are unpredictable and tend to steal the show. Proving that, the cows got, ah, a bit frisky. (Think Animal Planet.)

By comparison, the Ford press conference seemed pretty tame. A bunch of Ford truck celebrities—a NASCAR driver, a monster truck driver, the chief engineer (he was the one with the tie)—were there talking about the trucks. But the big time F-150 celebrity was country singer Toby Keith. He was chatting on stage with Mark Fields (making a rather disparate team) about how he wanted an F-150 Platinum for his ranch.

Fair enough—but I wonder: Ford also announced at the press conference that they would be putting its EcoBoost technology (direct injection and turbocharging) into the F-150 for 2010. Ford claims this will offer plenty of towing capability and torque—but somehow I don't see celebrity ranchers going for some turbocharged DI engine over a big ole' honkin' V8.

—Tom Mutchler

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