Massive Ram pickup has refined road manners

Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews also can be seen in the Northern & Central California Cruisin’ News magazine published monthly out of Folsom, California.

Sacramento, California -- There are big pickup trucks, and there are behemoths ... And then there are pickup trucks that have their own ZIP Codes and seemingly make their own weather.

A member of that last segment showed up in my driveway recently.  Its full name was a 2019 Ram 2500 Laramie Longhorn Crew Cab 4X4 Long Box.

For my money, it was nearly 22 feet of menace and intimidation.  It took me 10 minutes of pondering just to figure out how to get it moving without wrecking the homes of my neighbors.

I assumed that people who need to move massive cattle trailers or position a double-wide prefabricated home would need the bulk of my tester.  And pay the price. The bottom line on my ride was just short of $80,000.

Everything associated with the vehicle was big.  The owner's manual weighed in at 718 pages, or about the length of a Stephen King novel trilogy.  The complex instructions for positioning the tri-fold tonneau cover out of harm's way took me back to my first algebra class all those years ago.  Cold fear of messing it up.

I quickly concluded that this was a truck dripping in massive macho ... way above my pay grade.  I was not in its league.

But then I drove it.

Amazingly, it handled like a charm on the open roadways.  Steering was as comfortably firm and easy as that found in a crossover SUV.  Power was never a problem, with the 6.7-liter, six-cylinder Cummins turbo diesel dishing up propulsion and torque in massive doses.  My biggest problem was keeping the tester under 80 miles per hour on the freeway.  Cruising along at 75 was effortless.

Getting comfortable, I was amazed at the number of top-flight perks surrounding me in the cabin of this big brute: heated/ventilated front seats, heated steering wheel, 17-speaker primo Harman Kardon audio system, 12-inch navigation/video display, wireless charging pad and a power sunroof to name just a few.

It was all enough to make me forget about the possibility of wheeling this pickup on tight downtown streets or, heaven forbid, space-challenged parking lots.  And I can pretty much guarantee that if I owned this Ram as my only vehicle, it would never see a fast food drive-through lane in its lifetime.

But hey, I know that they make these heavy duty trucks for a reason, and that there are buyers out there who crave a big-daddy pickup.  For you folks, this might be your dream ride ... if you don't mind walking to the inside customer counter when you're craving a Big Mac from McDonald's.