Professional stock investors say you should be greedy when everyone else is scared and scared when everyone is greedy. If that’s true, now is the perfect time to buy a gas-guzzling full-sized vehicle with the biggest engine possible. For some, that means a hipster SUV that Doug DeMuro reviewed, like the Ford Excursion. But famed YouTube mechanic Car Wizard went in a different direction with his purchase, a 1996 Ram 3500 with a V10 engine.
A Ram truck with a V10? You’re probably thinking of the sporty Viper-powered SRT-10, but this takes things in an entirely different direction. It’s big, it’s slow and it drinks a lot of fuel, but can also be great if you’ve got one job: towing heavy stuff with a cheap, reliable vehicle.
These 1994-2002 Ram trucks don’t have a great reputation from a looks point of view, but Car Wizard is a professional mechanic and there’s nothing that goes bad he can’t fix. This 1996 Ram 3500 was actually bought a few months ago from a guy who wanted to downsize but couldn’t sell the vehicle cheaply enough because of its fuel-thirsty engine.
I think 10 mpg is actually a pretty conservative number, but the automotive world is filled with brand new SUVs which get about the same mileage and nobody complains about those. The fact that the Magnum 8.0-liter V10 is still running well after all these years of use and abuse is a testament to how reliable it is. Of course, if you’re going to do frequent towing and long miles, a Cummins diesel is going to be better, if you can find one cheap enough.
The Magnum V10 is part of the Chrysler LA family of engines. The company’s first 10-cylinder engine was given consideration at the end of the 1980s, as Ram may have needed bigger displacements for its 2500 and 3500 series of trucks. The 488 cubic-inch monster was basically a 5.9-liter Magnum V8 with a couple of extra cylinders. It’s a cast-iron block with only 8.4:1 compression, which contributes to durability. The odometer says over 170,000 miles, but it’s not hard finding owners with double that.
Early Cummins Rams are going for silly money
Power output was only 310 hp at 4,100rpm and 450 pound-feet at 2,400, which doesn’t sound like much in the context of the Viper V10, but this was the most powerful gasoline pickup in 1994. By comparison, the early Viper 8-liter made 400 horsepower, though that was built up by Lamborghini because Chrysler was the daddy of everything in the 1990s.
The Car Wizard did consider buying a diesel heavy-duty truck to do the towing, but asked around and heard nothing but horror stories. Basically, the emissions systems have a tendency to break down and put the truck in limp mode, costing owners valuable work time. So the mechanic says it’s simply not worth it to put up with newer diesel luggers if you’ve got a job.
Older Cummins trucks don’t have the “emissions garbage” on them and this is pushing the price of used trucks through the roof. Wizard shows us a 1997 Ram 3500 with a Cummins that sold for $29,000. He got his V10 for a fraction of the price at $7,000. Of course, those are mint-condition examples, whereas this V10 has rough paint. Red is a notorious color for fading and lacquer problems, but it’s not like that affects the towing abilities.
