St New 5.7l 4x4 Tow Hitch Power Steering Abs 4-wheel Disc Brakes Brake Assist on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Ram extends Black Package to Heavy Duty trucks

If you liked the Black Express package Ram offers on its 1500 light-duty pickup but need the added capability of a Heavy Duty model, we've got good news for you.
This week at the Atlanta International Auto Show, the Ram truck brand is rolling out the Black package for the Ram HD 2500 and 3500 SRW. It features a sinister-looking exterior with 20-inch alloys, fog lamps, grille, front and rear bumpers and badges all blacked out. All the body-side badging has also been removed, unless you go for Cummins power, in which case you still get a chrome diesel badge on the side.
In correspondence with Autoblog, Ram spokesman Nick Cappa explained that the popularity of the Black edition light-duty truck was the impetus for the Heavy Duty edition you see here. "Ram has a reputation for going further on design and custom-looks from the factory," explained Cappa, pointing towards the Express, Sport and Longhorn editions. "This type of forward design-thinking led us to extend the aggressive appearance to the HD trucks, which in the past has been a bit more subtle."

YouTube tallies votes for this year's top five Super Bowl spots [w/video]

When we asked you to tell us which of this year's 16 car-themed Super Bowl commercials you liked best, you chose the Farmer commercial from Chrysler Group, advertising the Ram trucks, over Audi's Prom commercial in second place. Turns out the voters in YouTube's Ad Blitz poll agreed, voting the same commercial to the number one spot from among the field commercials in every category.
From there, however, they went in a totally different direction. Budweiser's The Clydesdales spot came second, Samsung's The Next Big Thing took third. The Jeep Whole Again ad scored fourth in the YouTube poll, fifth in our poll of auto commercials, and the Hyundai Team spot got fifth from the YouTubers, but ninth in our poll.
The voting results don't match up with the viewing numbers, though - while Farmer has more than 13 million views, The Next Big Thing is well beyond 21 million. You can read the press release below and see all five spots, lined up for you, one more time.

Ram flubs ProMaster cargo capacity

The Ram ProMaster is going to look a little smaller on the inside, at least by way of its specification sheets, despite the sheet metal staying the same.
When Ram originally published the cargo capacity for its van, it simply did a direct conversion from the European rating of 15 cubic meters to 530 cubic feet. However, that didn't take into account the standard way internal measurements are calculated for the US. While the trucks have been on sale since October, the automaker just noticed the problem, and it's working on a revised figure. According to Automotive News, the new carrying ability for the ProMaster is likely between 450 and 475 cubic feet.
The difference stems from two standards for measuring capacity. In Europe, the entire internal area is determined and then obstacles like seats are subtracted from it. That means areas where freight could never go, like on top of seat backs, gets included in the figure. In the US, only the area where goods could actually fit is included, which leads to lower specs with no actual change in space.