A report out of Brazil from Auto Segredos (translated), picked up by CarBuzz, claims the U.S. is going to get a baby Ram pickup. The outlet was part of a group of local car media speaking to Antonio Filosa, president of Stellantis South America. Filosa's big announcement was that there'd be a new Ram 1200 truck for our neighbors in the next hemisphere, part of a product onslaught involving 16 new models and 26 revised models over the next three years. The key Auto Segredos line for us is, "The pickup will also be sold in the American market to face the Ford Maverick." If it's true, then this is enormous news.
Other details in the report leave us a touch cloudy on what such a pickup will look like for the American market, though. At one point, the AS article says the truck will be built on the Small Wide 4x4 platform used by Stellantis family products like the Jeep Renegade and Alfa Romeo Tonale. The architecture will be resized in Brazil "to be a medium-sized pickup" competing with the segment including the Chevrolet S10 (which is still on sale down there), Toyota Hilux, and Ford Ranger. Ram had a 1200 pickup on sale in the Middle East that was based on the Mitsubishi L200 and fought the Hilux and Ranger, but the Mitsu has always been body-on-frame and we'd wonder at Ram sending a cushy-riding pickup to battle hardcore work trucks.
In the U.S., however, we're told the Ram 1200 would fight in the class below that, in the growing field of compact pickups dominated at the moment by the Ford Maverick. The most confusing bit: AS writes, "In the U.S., there are plans for the Ram 1200 to have a chassis-mounted version." The way the piece is translated, Brazil would be getting a midsized Ram unibody pickup to challenge midsized body-on-frame pickups while the U.S. would get a compact Ram body-on-frame pickup to compete against a compact unibody pickup.
Something's either been lost in the Google translation, or Ram is truly operating in the fourth dimension if this comes to pass as we're reading it.
The common traits among both descriptions are four-wheel drive and a nine-speed automatic, both of which would start a potential small Ram competitor on the right foot. AS goes through engine options for the Brazil market that include the 2.0-liter Tigershark and 2.2-liter Multijet turbodiesel, neither of which we get here, as well as a 1.5-liter three-cylinder turbodiesel that doesn't exist yet.
So we'll put this report here as a marker and see where a new Ram pickup lands — if it happens. The Dakota still gets a whole lotta boys to the yard, so we know there are plenty in the Ram family who'd love to see something, anything, here to slot in below the 1500.
2022 Ford Maverick Lariat inside and out:
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