The giants in pickups are Ford, Chevrolet and Ram. In addition to Ram’s slice of the market, Ford had 36.2 percent market share last year, and Chevy was at 25.4 percent. (Ford’s F-150 is regularly the best-selling vehicle in America, followed by Chevy’s Silverado.) To woo back buyers, Ram is leaning heavily into machismo in its ads.
“Ford and Chevy are bigger players in this marketplace, they can’t take as extreme a position as Ram can. When you have market share, you have to protect it,” said Kelly O’Keefe, chief executive of the advertising and marketing consultancy Brand Federation.
It’s not at all odd for Ram to scoff at gas prices, he said, because practicality is beside the point. “These are not vehicles meant to haul plywood, they are meant to haul ass,” he said. “It’s like boasting about an F1 car with the biggest trunk. It’s not what it’s there to do. It’s not about efficiency, workload or practicality. They are about raw power.”
The point isn’t even to sell muscle trucks, Mr. O’Keefe said, but to enhance the brand, a strategy seen before with Dodge’s 1992 model-year introduction of the rakish Viper. A limited-production sports car, the Viper was listed for a then-outrageous $52,000, but dealers routinely refused bids of less than $150,000 (about $350,000 today). They didn’t want the car to sell, they wanted it as a lure on the showroom floor. “The Viper got dad into the showroom to see it, and he went home with a minivan,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “It worked for them.”
Ram is descended from Dodge, which has never shied away from over-the-top vehicles. Recall the Challenger R/T 440 Six Pack, Charger Daytona, Dart 440 or the Li’l Red Truck. But those were all one-offs, Mr. Kuniskis said. This new crop of muscle trucks will come in slightly less strapping, midpriced versions as well. “No one has done a whole line of them,” he said.
