August 2009 Archives

There is much to discuss between the debut of the 1981-2009 Dodge Ram and the original Dodge truck, which was introduced in 1917. Named the "commercial car", the pickup truck has seemingly been around since the availability of the automobile to the American public. The solid sided version panel truck (perhaps the original "Dodge" Ram Van) was instantly popular and used by Allied forces in World War I, but it took the innovations of two brothers from southeastern Michigan to truly make the truck a regular, useful, production vehicle.

The full-sized Dodge Ramcharger, predecessor to the Dodge Durango, was introduced in the mid 1970's when the American automotive market was seeing a new kind of truck, though it was labeled a station wagon. They typically bore a pickup truck front end and chassis with a solid cap, and the interior was unlike the typical pickup with a cap in that these new "station wagons" had a second row of seats. This allowed people the seating and hauling capacities of a family station wagon, but with the abilities, both on and off-road, of a pickup truck. Models such as the Chevrolet Blazer (known by some as the K5), Ford Bronco, Plymouth Trail Duster, and Ramcharger represented this new class of "car" that quickly became very popular.

The idea for the Dodge Viper was conceived of in the mid to late 1980's, a fairly dark era in the history of the American Muscle Car. This period in history saw the introduction of a 4 cylinder economy engine into fabled performance cars such as the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Camaro. In the case of the Chrysler Corporation, vintage performance car names had been slapped on imports built by Mitsubishi. While Chrysler still had some fairly quick cars, with their popular turbocharged Daytona and Laser, these 4 cylinder front wheel drive configured vehicles were a far cry from "muscle cars". The only vehicle which had not been compromised since the muscle car days was the Chevrolet Corvette, but with only 230-240 horsepower, they too were not what they once had been. Recognizing a gap in the market and the need for a Chrysler muscle car in 1987, then-President Bob Lutz contacted the head of Chrysler's Advanced Design Studio, Tom Gale, and discussed the possibility of creating what would be a modern day AC Cobra. This would be a car that would embody every aspect of high performance, whether on a drag strip or a road course; a car that would go down in history as being one of the all-time great American Muscle Cars. It took only a few months for Gale and the people at Chrysler Design to come up with a clay model and then a concept that would be displayed at the 1989 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The public and the media loved the new concept when it was displayed, and due to the reception that it received, Chrysler chief engineer Roy Sjoberg was given the green light to begin development on a production car based off of this concept.