On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 DICEMAN469@aol.com wrote:
[...]
> In my opinion, Dodge has been the leader all along. The Ram started it all,
> when it was redesigned in 94. Since then Ford and finally GM followed suit to
> CATCH UP with the Ram, and then the Dakota. They have more power, better
[...]
IMHO, Dodge's leadership was starting to materialize even before then;
back in the late 80s and early 90s. I wasn't a Mopar guy before I bought
my Dak. I was into sports cars; since Dodge didn't have anything to
compete at the level of the cars I considered "good" (3000GT VR-4,
Supra, 300ZX, Z-28, etc.) I didn't really know anything about Dodge. When
it came time to get rid of my VR-4, it became obvious to me that a truck
would be the best choice for me. I looked around, but everwhere I looked,
the Dakota was orders of magnatude above everything else. As soon as I
saw that Dodge was the only company with the guts to cram a V8 into a
mid-size pickup, I was sold. Everyone else is just playing follow the
leader. Even today, over 10 years later, the other companies STILL
aren't offering that kind of power in a mid-size or compact pickup!
There are some companies which are trying (Toyota comes to mind), but
they are failing in their execution; the Dakota is still the better truck.
On a related topic, somewhere else in this thread, someone mentioned
that DC only came out with the QC after Nissan did. The QC was on the
drawing board for a long time; I first started hearing the rumors after
Dodge released the QC Ram. Nissan just made it to market first with
theirs. It wasn't as if Dodge saw that Nissan had a QC and decided to do
the same. If they had, the QC probably wouldn't be released for a
couple of years yet.
-Jon-
.--- jon@dakota-truck.net -- or -- stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu ------------.
| Jon Steiger * AOPA, DoD, EAA, MP Race Team, NMA, SPA, USUA * RP-SEL |
| '92 Ram 150 4x4 V8, '96 Dakota V8, '96 Intruder 1400, '96 FireFly 447 |
`---------------------------- http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/ ---'
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