"RAM'S HORN"

“And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.” (Joshua 6:5)

I’ve got to say right at the outset that this is NOT a theological piece! This is another one of my secular “car buff” postings, but I could not resist that Biblical quote. Of course, the ram’s horn above refers to the shofar. If it meant the blasting of the horn of a Dodge Ram truck, now wouldn’t that be pretty awesome?!

If you’re not a car or truck buff, this piece will bore you to tears, but for you who ARE, I have a question: Have you noticed Chrysler Group LLC’s advertisements on television for 2011 Ram trucks? And have you noticed that most Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge dealers NOW include the “Ram” name and logo on their exterior walls? Have you noticed that the Ram logo is what used to be the Dodge logo, and that Dodge has a new logo? This has all had me puzzled. I wondered if Chrysler has made Ram a separate and distinct make, rather than a Dodge truck model as it has been for decades. I very much suspected Chrysler HAD done that.
You won’t see “Dodge” mentioned anywhere in the Ram television ads, nor in magazine ads for Ram, for that matter.

Chrysler has a history of doing that sort of thing before. People in my age group and older will remember that one of the first compact cars produced by the Big Three was the Valiant which was introduced as a 1960 model. Most of us remember the car as the “Plymouth Valiant”, competition for the Ford Falcon and Chevy Corvair. In fact, for 1960, Valiant was a separate and distinct MAKE. For ‘61, Chrysler decided it would be better to just include Valiant as a model of the Plymouth lineup, and the car was a Plymouth for the next fifteen years of its manufacture. In the early 1950s, the most expensive model Chrysler was the Chrysler Imperial. In 1955, Chrysler spun off “Imperial” as a separate and distinct make, rather than a Chrysler model. Imperial was a separate and distinct make for more than twenty years, although it used to drive most Imperial owners crazy that almost everybody referred to the car as the “Chrysler Imperial”! Eventually, Chrysler folded the Imperial make back into the Chrysler lineup and once again you had the “Chrysler Imperial” until the car was killed entirely.

If you do a thorough internet search for “Ram Trucks”, especially Chrysler Group LLC and some of the better automotive writers, you’ll find that in fact Ram has NOT become a separate make. Now, if you read Wikipedia, it states that Ram HAS become a separate make, but this is at odds with the Chrysler website itself! (I wrote a correction for the Wikipedia piece and submitted it, but whether that edit will show up, I don’t know!) You can do the research yourself and read the articles, but here’s the scoop as I’ve read it:

The Italian company FIAT has the controlling interest in Chrysler Group LLC. FIAT has been purposing to shake some things up and make some changes at Chrysler. For one thing, they purpose to make Chrysler strictly a luxury make to compete with Lincoln and Cadillac. Personally, I think that’s a horrible idea. For decades, Chrysler was marketed as a medium priced and slightly high end car; very much intended to compete with Buick. When Daimler-Benz owned Chrysler, they made some changes, including killing the Plymouth brand. That was very understandable because Plymouth was essentially the same thing as Dodge and was a much poorer seller than Dodge. But when they killed the low-priced Plymouth, they kept some Plymouth models and renamed them as Chryslers. One example is the Chrysler Voyager minivan (which has been discontinued). Another is the PT Cruiser which WAS planned to be a Plymouth, but was slightly reconfigured to be a Chrysler. The Voyager and PT Cruiser are certainly not luxury cars! They’re also not even medium priced high end cars! FIAT has also decided that they want to change Dodge’s image, and their ultimate goal for Dodge is that it be a sports car make something like Alfa Romeo. (I’m not kidding!) For that reason, FIAT does not like its connection to Dodge Ram trucks at all. (I don’t know what they intend to do with the Dodge Grand Caravan?!) Incidentally, SMALL trucks like the Dodge Dakota will still be marketed as Dodges, but full-sized Dodge trucks will be marketed as “Rams”. Originally, FIAT did intend Ram to be a separate and distinct make. They gave Ram the old Dodge logo and created a new Dodge logo. I don’t know why, but kind of at the last minute, FIAT decided to NOT make Ram a separate make, but to market the Ram truck AS IF it were a separate make! So, when you buy a Ram truck you DO buy a Dodge. I would THINK the title and registration would read “Dodge” under the “make” category. But the truck will never be marketed as a Dodge. If you look at the Chrysler Group LLC website, essentially in the fine print you read that the Ram truck IS a Dodge, but it’s being treated like a big secret.

Supposedly I’m a dope when it comes to business and marketing, but I’m putting this right out there in cyberspace that FIAT is all wrong in how it’s trying to reshape and remarket Chrysler! They should market the Dodge as a family car and truck (and minivan) make and market it toe to toe against Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota, Honda and Nissan, for that matter. I know Dodge’s sales slipped in the past five years, but in the 1990s and very early 2000s it was a very strong low-priced make and there’s no reason that can’t be the case again. Marketing Chrysler as a luxury car against Cadillac and Lincoln is NUTS! I guess I COULD see bringing out a luxury top of the line Chrysler and calling it the Chrysler Imperial, but such a car is never going to make BIG inroads against Cadillac and Lincoln. It’s frankly the Jeeps that bring people into Chrysler dealerships, but the Jeep foot traffic should generate enough sales to keep Chrysler selling cars, although I would not expect they’d ever do the sales volume of Dodge cars, let alone other makes.

It will be interesting to see how FIAT’s plans do at Chrysler, but, and I really mean no insult to Italian-Americans here, but how many FIATs do you see on the road and what is FIAT’s world wide image? I rest my case!