Road Test: 2015 Ram 1500 Rebel V-8 4x4

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Car & Driver / October 2015

Ram brand representatives swear that its new Rebel isn’t meant to compete with the Ford F-150 Raptor. But the comparison is impossible not to make. It’s a special off-road-themed version of a full-size American pickup. Its boldly branded grille, if not a blatant rip-off of the Raptor’s, is at least a suspiciously timed coincidence.

And while you can get this hyperbutch off-road styling pack on both a rear-drive V-8 truck and a four-by-four V-6, if you’re looking to back up the appearance with real guts, the V-8 4x4 starts at $47,565—only $1525 less than the Raptor crew cab. Well, $1525 less than the last Raptor to be sold here, anyway.

The only good reason not to consider the Raptor and Rebel as direct competitors is because the Raptor isn’t currently on sale (the new version won’t reach dealers until next year).

It’s a good thing the Raptor isn’t currently on sale, because the Ford would wallop the Rebel. Behind and underneath the Raptor’s flat-black “FORD” grille are a unique frame and powertrain, as well as a specially designed long-travel suspension that counts racing in the Baja 1000 among its accomplishments. The Rebel, on the other hand, has an extra inch of ground clearance because the airbags in its suspension carry an inch’s worth more air. They’re the same parts that you’ll find in other Rams, where apparently they’re slouching. There are no other mechanical changes.

It’s Got the Look

The Rebel is a styling package, albeit a rather comprehensive one. Red trim that resembles anodized aluminum and gray that mimics cast iron adorn the door panels, the dashboard, the center stack, and the HVAC bezels. The seats are covered in a nice red and gray vinyl, while the center console, the steering wheel, and the dash have red and gray stitching. It’s all rather well done, particularly the seats, which have the very same tread design molded into them as you’ll find on the Rebel’s 33-inch Toyo tires, as though somewhere along the assembly line there’s a station where the truck drives over the seats before they’re installed in its cab.

If that were actually the case, though, the tread design would be smeared, because the Toyos rarely meet a throttle application they don’t turn into positive slip. They’re not terribly noisy on the highway or in turns, but from a stop, the driver needs to be very judicious to keep the rears from squealing. In the rain, we put the Rebel into four-wheel drive just so we’d be able to accelerate at a reasonable pace. This truck would be spectacular, nearly undrivable fun in the wet were it not for stability control that can’t be fully defeated. And the 5.7-liter Hemi V-8’s gruff exhaust note only encourages such behavior. With ZF’s smooth-shifting eight-speed automatic behind it, the Hemi whips the Rebel to 60 mph in 6.6 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 15.2 at 92 mph. In spite of the tires’ off-road tread, we recorded exactly the same stopping distance (199 feet) and skidpad grip (0.71 g) as we did in the last Ram Laramie we tested.

The Laramie is just one of the Rebel’s numerous in-house competitors, and Ram would prefer buyers not look beyond them. “Pay no attention to that other thing,” they must say. Because, sure, the Rebel is a nice styling package, but the Raptor is something more. Raptor drivers get to laugh at the Rebel, and Rebel drivers will just have to take it. If you’re the kind of person who would prefer to spend your money on appearance rather than on capability, then you’d better be okay with that.

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