I found this while browsing this morning. Seems that not only is Dodge going to separate its Ram trucks as their own brand and label, but that they are also strongly considering entering the Class 8 Heavy-Duty market to produce and market their own "18 wheeler" class of trucks.

Ram brand may enter heavy-duty 18-wheeler market — Autoblog

 

Fiat Group already markets its IVECO line of trucks here, so a rebadge job of adding a rams head to some of them would be easy. Look at what Daimler did with the Sprinter, it wore Mercedes, Frieghtliner and Dodge badges.

Jim

 

Does dodge still ahve anything to do with freightliner or sterling? Or did that end with the Mercedes selling of Chrysler?

 

That truck in the pics is a lifted 3500 with 22.5s on it, nothing special. Theres enough heavy duty OTR companies IMO, don't need another.

 

They better make proven reliability and quailty job #1 before venturing into other markets.

Tim

 

Dodge used to be in the class 8 market years ago! They used to have both C.O.E. & Conventional models. The last year for the big semi's was 1976! The BigHorn was the conventional model and theres a 1975 BigHorn in Jeffersonville,In. right now with a 8V92TTA w/ 13 speed trans, it's being used a yard jockey. But you can hear it coming for over a mile with those straight pipes on it!

www.sweptline.com

 

Dodge, Ford and GMC were all in that business at one time. I think the problem is that a company that is used to mass-producing hundreds of thousands of units, may not have the right management talent for what is essentially a build-to-order custom shop.

Jim