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Ram bringing Rumble Bee Concept to Woodward

The 2013 Woodward Dream Cruise is taking place this weekend, and will see the arrival of over 1.5 million people and around 40,000 vehicles of seemingly every make in history. It's also a huge event for the manufacturers that call Detroit home, with Chevrolet setting up shop in Birmingham, Ford and its Mustang Alley locating itself in Ferndale and Chrysler hunkering down at 13 Mile in Royal Oak.
Ram will take advantage of the captive audience (if you think we're joking with the use of the term "captive," you've never tried to get off of Woodward during The Cruise) to show a new concept truck. And, judging from these teasers, it's going to be.. the Rumble Bee. In the past, Ram offered a Rumble Bee edition Ram 1500 that was mainly a styling treatment, but they were kinda cool trucks for those that wanted a muscle car but needed the room and utility of a big vehicle.
Details on the new Rumble Bee are scarce, but judging by the images seen here, it will sport bright yellow paint and a pair of large, black, five-spoke wheels wrapped in low-profile tires. The hood sports a set of hoodscoops for a bit more aggression, while the interior gets a reinterpreted dial shifter for the eight-speed automatic. We also see what may be a button to let a bit more rumble emanate from what we'd assume is a large Hemi engine underhood. Take a look at the gallery below to see both teaser images, and check back here for more as soon as we get it.

Ram/Jeep Ecodiesel engine has Maserati roots

The 3.0L turbodiesel V6 in the 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel earned a slot on Ward's Automotive 2014 10 Best Engines for its power, fuel economy and refinement. In a piece looking at how Fiat subsidiary VM Motor developed the engine, Ward's also makes note of the fact that the same lump goes in diesel versions of the Maserati Quattroporte and Ghibli. They're tuned a bit differently, naturally, with the QP putting out 275 horsepower and 442 pound-feet of torque, the smaller, lighter Ghibli making do with the same number of horses but a lower torque output of 420 lb-ft.
The 240 horsepower and 420 pound-feet put out by the oil-burning six-cylinder in the Ram was tamed with a host of advances, but it appears that Ram hasn't tamed demand: the initial allocation of 8,000 engines was spoken for within three days of the truck going on sale. Head over to Ward's to read the story of how Ram worked out the equation light-duty-pickup + diesel = success.

2019 Ram 1500 prototype gives us better glimpse of grille

Though we've managed to see most of the 2019 Ram 1500 from previous spy shots, we're still discovering new details here and there in spy photos. The latest batch shown above feature a truck with camouflage that covers most of the body, but curiously leaves the grille practically bare. The grille appears to be a version of what we saw on the nearly uncovered example from a few months ago. This time, that central bar is uncovered. In some ways, it looks like a sleeker version of the grille found on current Laramie Rams; the holes on either side of the emblem area are slimmed way down, and fit a single line. We can also see that those holes line up with the turn signal/daytime running light elements in the headlights. If you're not a fan of this new grille, the good news is that there will probably be a variety of different designs available, just as there are on current Rams. There aren't many other details to glean from this prototype, though. It appears to be the longer of the four-door models and has an impressive amount of glass area. The tailgate is fully covered, so we can't tell if this has a conventional drop-down gate or the split version we've seen on another prototype. We should know much more in about a month when the Ram 1500 is expected to appear at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show. For more about the Ram including renderings of the final truck, check out our post on what we know so far. Related Video: