Happy Monday everyone, Big_Blocker here and I’m not going to lie I am pretty amped off what I saw in the first two episodes of the Ram Challenge, a new aggressive marketing campaign to promote the 2009 Dodge Ram. At first I was a little bit apprehensive however, after watching episodes one and two, I am truly excited for parts three and four. Hit the jump for more of my review of the first half of the Ram Challenge.

Now I must admit, I am a pretty big Dodge fanboy seeing as I drive an 01 Dodge Ram 1500 however I had my doubts as to the badassery of the Ram Challenge prior to watching. Like myself, I am sure many of you have seen commercials on tv that show clips of the Ram Challenge that show trucks flying through the air while others swing from cables in an orgy of destruction. I am also sure that most of you are familiar with Hollywood antics and the art of promotion and are aware that there are some previews that hype something up to a fever pitch only to have it crash miserably to the ground (I am talking about you Jarhead). However, the commercials for the Ram Challenge are pretty accurate and represent the competition fairly well while leaving more to be discovered.

If any of you read my previous blog on the introduction of the 09 Ram you will know some of the unique features that make it a perfect candidate for this gnarly challenge. The new 5.7 L Hemi in the truck puts out 390 horsepower and 407 pound feet of torque which is monstrous for a factory pickup in my opinion. All that power should make for one hell of a performer, but what would the crew and director Tony Scott come up with to test this thing? I am going to answer that with a summary of what I have seen so far.

The competition starts in typical Hollywood form as the teams are flown in on a Huey helicopter straight out of Vietnam to some remote location (presumably Southern California) to the camp/obstacle course. The teams are introduced as 4 accurate representations of American workers: Cowboys, Fireman, Military and Contractors. The host (some fat white guy) shows the teams their trucks and then fires a shotgun to start the first race in which the last place team gets sent home. This is where the competition gets interesting because after that gun is fired, it’s a balls-to-the-wall race to the finish. There wasn’t really much structure to the first leg as teams were cutting each other off, knocking down course markers and literally launching their trucks through the air and slamming down again only to negotiate tight turns. Something I liked about it was that the teams didn’t have their hands held by the production crews but rather were thrust onto a course where they could make mistakes (such as busting out the rear window of their truck as the Fireman did with a front loader). On several occasions a team would make a wrong turn and would have to back up and adjust to get back on course while another team squeezed by. The first race wasn’t about babying the truck on an off-road course, no no, they beat the sh*t out of them in race one. The slogan adopted by Dodge for this campaign is quite appropriate I think.

Race two was a different story and required more of a collaborative effort of truck, passenger and driver. It consisted of a steep decent, use of the computer system for directions, trailer hitching and towing and bridge building in order to reach the finish line. There was a much larger room for human error in the second part of the competition especially in the towing portion where a couple of the teams had trouble lining up the hitch to the trailer. Again something I thought was good was that each team did not have a chance to see the course prior to driving and had to act on adrenaline and split-second thinking in order to successfully make it through the course in a quick time. There are definitely some pretty sweet parts of the second part including a near failure when crossing a shoddy bridge and trailers nearly jack-knifing off the trail.

All in all I am pretty happy with the first half of the Ram Challenge and will eagerly wait for part 3 to come out on the 20th of this month. I encourage all of you to check out the Ram Challenge even if you don’t like trucks because it’s a pretty badass competition. Big_Blocker out.