2024 RAM 1500 on/off-road (inc. 0-100) review: Are the F-150/Silverado old news now?

CarExpert

You know I love my dual-cab utes! So I was excited to get behind the wheel of the 2024 RAM 1500 Laramie Sport - a new spec to Australia. It comes with mild hybrid and we did some on-road driving, off-road driving and performance testing.  Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More RAM content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ram More RAM 1500 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ram/1500  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 01:24 Interior: 05:00 Infotainment: 06:35 Safety Tech: 08:35  Practicality: 09:16 On-road: 12:25 Performance: 18:29 Off-road: 20:56 Verdict: 27:01  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #ram #1500 #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. Dual-cab utes. They are the best-selling vehicles in Australia every

00:05 single month. That's why these things are so popular, because a lot of Australians are

00:10 buying Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger. They're kind of small in the grand scheme of things.

00:14 This is the big daddy you want to step up to if you need something reasonably sized,

00:18 and ironically, this is kind of one of the smaller utes you can actually buy in the States.

00:22 This is a little bit special. The Ram 1500, it gets delivered to Australia as a left-hand

00:27 drive vehicle, but they are converted to right-hand drive here in Australia, which

00:30 is kind of an interesting process. When we go for a drive, we'll see whether it really

00:34 impacts the way this drives. This one here is a new variant they've added in. It's called

00:38 the Laramie Sport. It's kind of mid-spec. It's priced at just under $140,000. If that's

00:43 all too expensive, though, the entire range kicks off at just under $100,000 with the

00:48 old version of this, which they're still manufacturing, so you can save a little bit of money there

00:52 if you don't want all the whiz-bang tech and gadgets. This competes with things like the

00:56 new Ford F-150, the Toyota Tundra, and the Chevy Silverado. They are really just picking

01:02 up a whole lot of steam here in Australia and are becoming incredibly popular.

01:05 Today, we're going to do a detailed review plus some off-road driving in this. If you

01:09 do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes that are

01:13 on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below.

01:17 If you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so

01:20 you can find out every single time we drive a big old beast.

01:24 Now let's talk about exterior design. These things are big. If you do park this next to

01:28 a traditional dual cab ute, we've got a GWM Cannon over here at the moment, you will notice

01:33 that it is sizeable, and in fact, the front end of this sort of comes up to my man-boob

01:38 here, whereas on the GWM, it sort of sits a little bit lower. It isn't enormous, though,

01:43 and I think that's a critical thing. You can still use this as a daily if you need to.

01:47 In terms of the actual design, though, you've got big LED headlights over here that give

01:51 you great visibility at night time. Big open section here for cooling. This is a naturally

01:56 aspirated V8 engine. It has hybrid functionality that I'll run you through when we go for a

02:00 bit of a drive. You have rated recovery points down the front there if you do want to do

02:04 a bit of light off-roading, which we'll do later on as well.

02:07 Come around to the side with me. Down here, you're going to find yourself a nice set of

02:10 20-inch alloy wheels, chrome in design, so it kind of stands out there for a bit of bling.

02:15 A bit more chrome up the top here. 1500 signifies this variant. You can go to 2500. There are

02:20 a number of other variants available in the Ram range. And then HEMI for the engine that's

02:24 under the bonnet, and eTorque for the hybrid functionality. Ram down the side here as well.

02:31 Camera on the side mirror here for the 360 camera functionality. Privacy glass. This

02:36 is probably my favourite feature of this vehicle. It's never really sort of made sense to me

02:40 with a vehicle like this that's so large, why do they not make better use of the spacers?

02:45 And this is called the Ram Box. It's got a button on the side here. It's lockable. It

02:49 is a great spot to put your KFC if you're coming home with that so you don't stink out

02:53 the cabin and other valuables as well. And then once you're done with that, you close

02:57 it, lock it, and away you go. So pretty clever setup and sport insignia here for this variant.

03:03 Come around to the back with me. Now around the back here, you're going to find yourself

03:05 LED tail lights. This is also the section that houses the rear cross-traffic alert radar.

03:10 4x4, which signifies this is in fact an all-wheel drive vehicle. Laramie over here for the spec

03:16 and then big Ram lettering there. Now you've got a number of little bits and pieces down

03:20 here that I'll need to point out. So you've got reverse lights that they integrate into

03:23 this when it gets remanufactured here in Australia. Camera over here and a grab handle to lower

03:28 that tailgate. Four and a half tonne braked towing capacity. You also have dual exhaust

03:33 pipes that let out a fair old grumble. In the tray here, let me run you through the

03:37 dimensions. Also love that that is hydraulic as well so when you drop it, it comes down

03:42 nice and easily. So you've got yourself a spray-in bed liner. You have LED lights here

03:47 off to the side. Now this is an interesting setup. So unlike a lot of dual cab utes that

03:53 have like a roller cover, you actually have this canvas set up here and I'll quickly just

03:58 push this out of the way just so you can see what it looks like. So you can roll that back

04:02 and have a look at this. You have just accessories that you could throw at this thing. This is

04:06 a lockable centre portion that can be moved throughout the tray there and it gives you

04:12 an excellent divider that stops things sliding around. And you can see as well with those

04:15 RAM boxes that you don't really lose a great deal of practicality here either. It's a little

04:21 over 1700mm deep and a little over 1200mm wide. You don't have wheel arches intruding

04:25 in this. It's just a really clever use of space and it's done incredibly well. Now payload

04:30 is interesting because despite the size of this vehicle, it actually has less payload

04:35 than a Ford Ranger, which I find truly bizarre. So you have an enormous towing capacity but

04:41 less payload. So it is a bit of a head scratcher that one. Let me know what you reckon about

04:44 the RAM 1500. It is expensive in Australia but that is because they do a lot of work

04:48 to convert them to right-hand drive here. Do you reckon it's too much? Would you go

04:52 for something like this over a Thailand made or a Chinese made dual cab ute like the rest

04:57 of the market here in Australia? Let me know what you reckon in the comment section below.

05:01 So we're inside the RAM 1500. We will start off with the key. This is what it looks like.

05:05 You've got unlock, lock, double tap here to drop the tailgate, double tap there to remote

05:12 start and then a panic button and on the back it says RAM. So you keep that in your pocket.

05:16 It's got a proximity entry and then a push button start. Have a look at this interior.

05:20 I think that if you are spending 140 grand on one of these things, this looks sensational.

05:26 And the thing that just blows me away is that the steering wheel used to be there and I

05:30 genuinely cannot tell what they've engineered here in Australia to make all of this work

05:36 because visually it appears that this came out of the factory as a right-hand drive vehicle.

05:40 I really can't tell what has changed. So quite impressive on that front in terms of how they've

05:46 managed to do that. In terms of the actual design of the original product itself, you've

05:50 got soft touch finishes all along the dashboard there, all along the doors here. This feels

05:54 like a significant step up from any of the dual cab utes that are on sale here in Australia

05:59 at the moment, any of the non-American ones in terms of the quality. In terms of your

06:03 touch points, well all of that stuff is soft to the touch. How soft is it? Well, I've got

06:08 our durometer here. We've tested all the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see

06:12 how this compares to other vehicles that we've tested before, look at the link in the description.

06:17 Now build quality. All of this is seriously solid. I cannot fault any of it. And this

06:24 is what the door sounds like. Nice and solid as well. And you hear that noise? That is

06:31 the sidestep dropping down so you can easily get out of the vehicle. Now let's talk infotainment.

06:37 So similar to the new Ford Ranger, this has an enormous screen here in the centre. It's

06:41 a 12-inch display. It houses all of the fun stuff that you need access to. So inbuilt

06:48 satellite navigation. So you can just use this as a sort of day-to-day thing. TomTom

06:53 powered maps. And then you can also then assign different functions here as widgets and shortcuts

06:59 as well. So pretty decent system. It's called Uconnect. It is the Stellantis overarching

07:05 system and I found it to be really good to deal with. On the audio front, you have a

07:09 19-speaker Harman Kardon branded sound system. It's a great sound system. You have AM/FM

07:15 radio. Unfortunately, there is no DAB digital radio in there, which is a little bit disappointing.

07:20 There's also where you control your climate control. So you do still have physical buttons

07:25 off to the side, but all of your seat heating and that kind of stuff is then further customised

07:30 and controlled in here. You have vehicle settings. So there's a litany of settings here to pick

07:35 from in terms of changing the car's settings and making personalisations and all that kind

07:41 of stuff. And then there's a further app screen here where you can actually go through and

07:46 mark things as favourites and then add apps as well as they get released for the infotainment

07:51 system. On the smartphone mirroring front, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Apple

07:55 CarPlay is a wireless integration, so full screen there. Tends to work pretty well. Sometimes

08:01 it does drop out. Can't sort of put my finger on what is causing it, but sometimes it's

08:05 toll gantries and other random things like that. And this is what Android Auto looks

08:09 like. Crack that up there. Comically, it's like in this tiny little screen up the top

08:15 there. So not sure what the story is with that or how to change that. Maybe if you know,

08:19 let me know in the comments section below. But yeah, if that's not changeable, that is

08:23 just a very weird thing to have happen. You do also have a screen here ahead of the driver.

08:28 It's a digital display. You can customise a number of functions there. This gives you

08:32 a bit of clear visibility on what's going on ahead of the driver.

08:35 Now, moving on to safety, you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist

08:41 detection. You've got an auto dimming rear vision mirror. You've got a blind spot monitor

08:44 built into your wing mirrors. You have rear cross traffic alert, front and rear parking

08:48 sensors and a 360 camera. I'll show you what that looks like. There it is there. Quality

08:54 is not too bad. It's kind of all segregated to that top section there, but you can then

09:00 select different views to give you a clear indication of what's going on, including an

09:06 auxiliary camera, which I reckon is pretty cool. So you could hook it up to your trailer

09:09 or something like that. So yeah, I reckon that's a pretty cool setup.

09:12 This is what the horn sounds like. Now, let's chat about your practicality and we'll start

09:18 off with your connectivity. So you've got USB A and C ports down the front here, including

09:23 an auxiliary outlet. Up the top here, you've got a 12 volt outlet. In terms of storing

09:28 your phone, you have a RAM charger here, which is a wireless phone charger. You can kind

09:32 of put your devices anywhere you want, and the storage here is sensational because you

09:36 can move that back. You can just put stuff everywhere.

09:39 So in terms of bottle storage, little bottle fits in there without any problems. You've

09:43 got these rubber teeth to hold everything in place. You have bottle storage inside the

09:47 door as well for the small bottle. Try it for the big bottle as I reach over there.

09:52 Yep, it's for the big bottle as well. In terms of other storage, so up the top here, you've

09:57 got a little storage slot with another USB A port. Then you can access this storage slot

10:02 with some cool trigonometry up the top here. You can slide this back to give you access

10:07 to a little cubby hole down there as well. So they really have thought of everything.

10:11 Up the top here, you have a secondary glove box. Down the bottom, I can't even reach that

10:15 one, you've got your primary glove box. And then up the top here, you've got a sunglasses

10:19 holder as well.

10:21 Moving on to comfort. So you've got dual zone automatic climate control. You have heated

10:27 and cooled seats. You have a heated steering wheel. Your seats are electrically adjustable,

10:32 so you can go forwards and backwards. Your backrest can go forwards, backwards. You've

10:36 got lumbar adjustment. You can raise the front and the back. Your passenger seat is electrically

10:42 adjustable. Driver's side also has memory too. Seats are super comfy for long distance

10:47 drives. It is just a really nice driving position.

10:50 In terms of steering adjustment, you have both tilts and reach adjustment as well. And

10:55 on our reach test, all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving.

10:59 Okay, second row. Let me run you through some huge innovation here. So doors open really

11:05 wide, so you're getting in and out, getting kids in and out. All of that stuff is pretty

11:09 easy.

11:10 Under the floor here, so you've got a carpet mat, but beneath that carpet mat, you actually

11:14 have additional storage on each side of the car with rulers as well, which is great. The

11:18 seats, they come up, so you've got storage space beneath the seats, which is very good.

11:24 And then you hop on in, grab the door handle, close the door.

11:29 So, look at this room. I have so much knee room. Toe room's great. Headroom is excellent.

11:36 This is the definition of travelling in style with stacks of room. You could easily fit

11:41 three adults next to each other here without any problems.

11:44 Crutch comforts, you've got air vents here. You've got two USB-A, two USB-C ports.

11:50 Seat heating for the outboard seats, a little storage nook in there. Cup holders. You've

11:54 got mat pockets in the back of the seats.

11:56 Have a look at this. That drops down. You've got two additional cup holders there, a little

12:00 storage nook in there.

12:02 But probably my favourite feature is the kick back and relax function. So, pull this little

12:07 lever here. Look at that, you can kick back and relax. It is sensational. They've thought

12:13 of everything here.

12:14 And finally, our window testers go all the way down. So, it's manual up and down. Goes

12:21 all the way down as well. What else more could you want?

12:26 Okay, so we've hit the road in the 1500. Now, this is an interesting setup because

12:32 although they say it's hybrid, no need to panic, it is still a naturally aspirated V8.

12:36 So 5.7 litre, naturally aspirated V8. It makes 291 kilowatts of power and a little under

12:44 600 newton metres of torque.

12:46 It is mated to a 48 volt mild hybrid system. The whole purpose of that is to do a couple

12:52 of things. You've got cylinder deactivation, but also when you come to a stop, if you just

12:56 watch this rev gauge here, when you come to a stop it switches the engine off and then

13:01 I'll show you what it does once it flicks back on. So, it's off now. When I roll out

13:05 of the brake and onto the throttle, it is really, really smooth. So, it's just a really

13:11 good stop start system and when it comes to stop start systems, I typically like to switch

13:15 them off if they're annoying. This one on the other hand, perfectly fine to live with

13:18 and isn't really too fussy or distracting when you're actually driving.

13:22 Now, it's all mated to an eight speed automatic transmission. The transmission's not too bad.

13:28 It can feel a little bit clunky when you're rolling down to a stop as it moves back through

13:33 the gears, especially when it's trying to couple that with switching itself off. But

13:37 when you do just get stuck into it, it picks up the gear nicely and then you hear that

13:44 beautiful V8 note here inside the cabin. So, it is a really good package and it sounds

13:48 fantastic behind the wheel.

13:50 Interestingly, unlike a lot of other cars where you have paddle shifters behind the

13:54 steering wheel, this one just has buttons for our volume and channel selection. The

13:59 actual gear selection mechanism is here on the front of the steering wheel and that tends

14:03 to work pretty well without too many dramas.

14:05 Now, RAM claims a combined 12.2 litres per 100 Ks. We are currently sitting on 16.9 as

14:14 an average. Not great, but I've got to say that we've been doing a fair bit of city driving

14:20 prior to getting here and doing the highway stretch here. We've done a little bit of faster

14:24 driving this morning, so it is okay, but not amazing and is pretty much what you'd expect

14:29 from a naturally aspirated V8.

14:31 Now, what's it like inside the cabin in terms of road noise? It's actually pretty quiet.

14:37 You would have thought that something this size would make a lot of tyre noise, but it's

14:40 pretty subdued and there isn't too much to talk about. And this is how it went up against

14:44 our calibrated sound meter.

14:46 Now, let's check visibility. This thing is a whopper of a vehicle, so you've got to keep

14:51 that in mind, but it does have really big wing mirrors, so you can see clearly out of

14:55 those. I don't know whether they actually switched these when they were doing the conversion

15:01 because that mirror over there seems to have a whole lot more perspective than this one.

15:04 This one seems really close, so I'm not sure if they were meant to have switched those

15:08 during the conversion or not, but I would have preferred to have the one with more perspective

15:12 on this side of the vehicle.

15:13 But you do have blind spot monitoring on the spec, so you can clearly sort of see that

15:17 lit up when you do have any traffic coming through. You can see clearly down the front

15:21 that you've got front and rear parking sensors. Visibility is great out the rear, and it isn't

15:24 too intimidating to drive on the road. Once you get used to it, it's all pretty straightforward.

15:28 Okay, let's dial up some speed. We're going to go over the sine waves. So we do these

15:33 at 130 k's now. They're a really good indication of what a vehicle is like when you're on a

15:39 country road and you've got to do an overtake or pick up the speed a little bit. I actually

15:43 did a regional drive recently with a couple of new Porsches, and roads are shocking at

15:48 the moment, so this is a good indication of what it's actually like. There's 130. Wow!

15:56 Holy moly! Eagle looks terrified in the back seat. He almost touched the moon there. Yeah,

16:05 look, we got a fair bit of air time there. The body control's not great. There is a reason

16:09 for that. So this is set up with comfort in mind. A lot of these American utes are, and

16:14 it doesn't feel to me like they've done any ride and handling tuning for Australia. So

16:18 perfectly fine if all you're going to be doing is towing and stuff like that. So really not

16:22 the end of the world. But yeah, do keep in mind if you go for an overtake, just watch

16:25 the road that you're on because these can get very flighty. Okay, rough road time. Do

16:29 this one at 90 k's an hour. Let's see what this is like. So it simulates a shocker of

16:34 a road here in Australia. I'm tipping, and this is going to be pretty good, given how

16:38 soft the suspension is. Yeah, nice. It is cruising along here without any dramas at

16:44 all. Here comes our condensed sine wave as well. Beautiful. Not a problem at all. So

16:52 this is just a good example of a shoddy road that you could be driving on in the middle

16:56 of Australia and sucking it all up really nicely. Now let's talk drive modes. You have

17:01 a tow and a haul mode for towing, along with an integrated brake controller. There is no

17:05 sport mode or anything like that, but you can switch between two wheel drive, high range

17:10 and four wheel drive automatic. So I'm going to pop that into four wheel drive auto. Let's

17:14 go for a little punt around our track here. Oh, that sounds good. Let's see what this

17:19 feels like. Brake pedal feels good. Tip it in. A little bit of body roll there, but end

17:27 of the world. It's actually surprising how this thing is moving. For something this size,

17:38 it's actually sort of holding on really nicely. When I was playing around with it before in

17:43 two wheel drive high range, it actually still had a fair bit of traction, despite the fact

17:46 that you're sending all that torque to the rear wheels. Steering communication is, it's

17:52 good, but I did notice when you are tracking along on the highway, as an example, it is

17:57 pretty dead about centre, which I'll show you in a second. But just from a handling

18:02 point of view, this is actually motoring along pretty nicely for something this size. And

18:08 here comes out back straight. There goes half our equipment. And nice, it's piling on speed

18:16 nicely. Very good. Yeah. So look around sort of dead centre there, I have a fair bit of

18:21 wiggle room there on the steering, which isn't great. So yeah, that's probably something

18:26 that they could look to fix.

18:29 Okay, time to do some performance testing. Let me tell you about Help Me Car Expert.

18:36 If you're in the market for a new car, Car Expert's a massive company. We have a stack

18:39 of vetted dealers on board, including some Ram dealers who are ready to get you an excellent

18:43 deal on one of these that is in stock. So what you need to do is go to Google, type

18:47 in Help Me Car Expert, and then have a look at the page that that drops you on.

18:52 Okay, so we don't have an official zero to 100 time, but what I will be doing is switching

18:57 stop start off. I've got it in four wheel drive auto, I might also turn traction control

19:02 off as well. I'm gonna go all the way through to 120, dial up some revs, here we go.

19:10 Oh, that gets off the line nice. All right. Beautiful. Here's 100. And 120. Nice. Alrighty.

19:29 Felt really nice and strong off the line there. So zero to 100 in 7.08 seconds. So seven seconds

19:35 dead flat. And then 80 to 120, 4.8 seconds, really good as well. So just shows you with

19:41 these big American trucks that if you are towing, you've got so much headroom available

19:46 there to just get stuck into it and make everything happen. So yeah, pretty impressed with those

19:52 acceleration figures.

19:53 All right, let's head back and do a break from 100. Okey dokey. Get this up to 100.

20:00 Not too much of an issue. Here we go. Actually didn't feel too bad from behind the wheel.

20:18 So 2.95 seconds, 41.32 metres. Impressive for such a big vehicle. Yeah, not too bad

20:25 at all. And now our reverse acceleration test. Quickly this will go in reverse. Here we go.

20:40 Love that rev limiter there. So I got up to about 40 k's an hour. That sounds unreal.

20:46 It's like a, kind of sounds like a launch control thing when it grabs that rev limiter.

20:53 That is unreal. All right. Very nice.

20:57 Okay, let's do a little bit of light off-roading. We'll see what the RAM is like on our little

21:03 off-road track here. So I'll run you through the specs first. So you've got two wheel drive

21:07 high range, four wheel drive automatic, so that allows you to run four wheel drive high

21:12 range on sealed and unsealed surfaces. You've got four wheel drive high range, four wheel

21:16 drive low range. There is a limited slip differential at the rear, but no rear diff lock. Grand

21:21 clearance of just under 230 mil. In terms of approach and departure angles, they're

21:25 around 20 degrees. So approach angle is the face you can approach before you hit the front

21:29 of the car. Departure angle is the same, but in reverse. And I don't really know what the

21:34 weighting depth is. There's a few sort of different sources out there that say it's

21:38 around 700 millimetres. So we'll see how it goes when we try to do our little water crossing

21:43 over there.

21:44 What we're going to do here on our off-road course is go through in two wheel drive in

21:48 our offset mode, we'll see how good the traction control is, and then we'll come back around

21:53 and do that again in four wheel drive high range. So let's give this a shot and see how

21:59 we go. So the way that this is designed is that I want to get the rear tyre off the ground,

22:06 and then I'm going to gradually apply throttle so we can see how good the traction control

22:09 system is. So there it is there. We should have a limited slip differential, but I can

22:18 see that wheel spinning very freely there. Traction control is then coming in and biting.

22:25 So that's interesting. It's meant to have a limited slip diff, but I'm not sure what

22:29 the go is with that. It might just be one of those braking systems and not an actual

22:33 mechanical limited slip differential. But yeah, that was interesting. Okey dokey. So

22:38 we'll go back again this time in four wheel drive high range. So this is designed to see

22:44 again how well the traction control system works when we have kind of a cross axle setup

22:48 where we only have two tyres with traction. So here we go. We'll just get this set up

22:54 on our spot here. A little bit closer in. So we're about there. So I'm going to roll

23:02 onto the throttle now. And we'll just see how it goes. Yeah, the wheelbase here is quite

23:10 long so it rolled out of that without any dramas at all. Normally when we have our dual

23:15 cab units and other vehicles here they all have similar wheelbases and that will catch

23:18 them out. But this got through without any dramas at all. And given that we aren't really

23:23 relying as much on traction control here, it just kind of just used the four wheel drive

23:27 system to get itself through that. Okay, time to give our hill a shot. So we do this in

23:33 low range. We're going to do it twice. So once I'm just going to mosey up with gradual

23:37 throttle and I'll come back again, stop and then accelerate to see what it's like. So

23:42 I'll pop that into neutral, press the low range button, wait for that to flick across.

23:48 It's saying four wheel drive shift in progress. Okay, that is engaged. Okay, here we go.

23:55 All right, so gradual throttle. It just did a kick down in the gear there but no dramas

24:07 aside from that. Climbed without any problems. All right, go through our little mud bog.

24:12 All righty. Now we don't have a hill descent control here so what I'm going to do is just

24:19 pop the front camera on so I can see over the front of the car there and then I'll also

24:25 manually select first gear so we can just crawl down here. So here we go. Touchdown

24:34 there. Yeah, nice. It's sort of holding itself fine there but a hill descent control would

24:43 be a welcome addition I reckon. An option, just like everything in this world. Okay,

24:50 so now let's go back up our hill. This time I'll just come to a stop halfway up and then

24:55 we'll see how well it copes with that situation. So get to about here. Come to a stop, I'll

25:03 roll onto the throttle. Piece of cake.

25:10 Okay now, rock time. So ground clearance of just under 230mm. It should be fine going

25:17 over this but we'll see how it goes in terms of touching down. I'm going to ride the brake

25:21 with the throttle as we go through here. God, it's so nice and comfortable inside the car.

25:26 You don't really get thrown around at all which is good. Yeah, really nice and comfy.

25:32 No dramas there. It's almost like a massage as you work your way through here. Yeah, nice,

25:40 awesome. Alright, piece of cake over the rocks as well. Now let's head over to our river

25:45 and do a little bit of a river crossing. It's currently at around 650mm so we'll see how

25:51 this goes with a little bit of water thrown in for good measure. Okay, so a little mud

25:55 bog to get through here and that sets us up for the approach into our river crossing.

26:02 This is going to displace a lot of water I suspect. We'll see how it goes. Alrighty,

26:10 here we go. I'll drop her in. Nice. And just cruise on through. Very good. Okay, this is

26:19 a bit of a steep ascent out of here so we'll see how it goes in terms of touching down.

26:23 Nice, no dramas. Kill those parking sensors. A little bit of steam coming up there from the

26:31 big old Hemi V8. Outside of that all very straightforward. So yeah, look, this is a

26:38 pickup that you can drive in and around the city, that you can drive on the highway and

26:43 that if you do want to go do a little bit of light off-roading like this, it's going to meet

26:46 those needs as well. So it is a pretty impressive truck on all of those fronts and if I did want to

26:53 go a little more hardcore in terms of off-roading, I'd go for a lift and maybe also option the axle

26:58 locks as well to help you through some of those tougher situations. Okay, Ram 1500. I reckon this,

27:06 the Laramie Sport, is right in the sweet spot of where you want to be if you're buying one of

27:10 these. Comes with all the features that the entry level is missing. Heaps of fun to drive. I mean,

27:15 this American truck segment is unlike the dual cab utes that you're used to, where there's a

27:20 quantum leap between the better ones and the worst ones. Here in the American truck segment,

27:24 they're all really good and I'm very excited to drive the Tundra when that is finally revealed

27:29 and F-150s coming up now. There's a new Silverado too. There's just so much going on. So if you are

27:34 in the market for one of these, they are doing some good deals at the moment. This is the one

27:38 I would be going for. It is a stack of fun to drive. So let me know what you reckon in the

27:42 comments section below. You're a fan of this. Have you bought one of these? What is it like?

27:47 How is it to live with? Do you have issues with that infotainment system? I'm keen to see what

27:51 you think. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your

27:55 mates. And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon.

27:58 But until next time, take it easy.

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