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Payne: 2023 Ram 2500 Heavy Duty Rebel is a beauty — and a beast
Posted by Talbot Payne on October 12, 2023
Holly Oaks — Dude, light-duty off-road trucks are soooo 15 minutes ago.
On a sodden Saturday at Holly Oaks ORV Park, I could barely stand along Ridgeline Trail on the park’s west side. At 6-feet-7-inches tall, my 2023 Ram 2500 Heavy Duty Rebel loomed beside me like the War Rig from “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
Thirty-three-inch Goodyear Wrangler all-terrain tires. Power dome hood. Skid plates. Red war paint. A beast.
And a beauty. As I swung my mud-caked boots into the cab, I entered an interior straight out of a South Beach condo. Leather stitched dash, leather thrones, 12.3-inch digital instrument display, 12-inch vertical infotainment screen. What, no sauna?
Bigger is better and my fearsome 2500 Rebel has it all. Heavy Dutys designed for hauling yachts now have yacht-like interiors plus the off-road armor once reserved for Jeeps. Ram follows Ford’s Tremor in bringing its Rebel off-road model to the HD segment — and Chevy isn’t far behind with its first heavy-duty ZR2 trim for the 2024 model year. My friend Scott, a loyal Ford owner, covets the Tremor but was wowed by the Ram’s interior. High praise.
The Rebel badge debuted on the Ram 1500 in 2015, but that truck can’t fit in my garage either. So why not supersize to a 2500 and its monster, 17,000-pound towing numbers. Heck, this thing can tow a garage.
The license plate should be issued by the state of Brobdingnag.
The Rebel HD is massive. Gargantuan. Mega. In addition to the aforementioned highlights, my HD Rebel Crew Cab has a 410-horse V-8 (a 6.7-liter diesel inline-6 is a $9,595 option), 6-feet-4-inch bed, and 13-inch lift . I’m 6-feet-5-inches and had to haul myself into the seat by the steering wheel. Mrs. Payne needed a ladder.
With great size comes great responsibility.
After a night of heavy rain, I drove the HD Rebel to Holly Oaks for some playtime. At nearly four tons, 79 inches wide, and 19½ feet long, the War Rig needs room and I drove it on adaptive cruise control up Telegraph Road so radar would aid my eyeballs in detecting any sudden slowdowns up ahead. War Rig could do serious damage in a collision to a small, 3,000-pound compact car.
Curiously, for all my $80K tester’s luxury, the adaptive cruise will come to a complete stop at a stoplight — then, um, release after five sedans like my wife’s old 2017 Subaru Impreza. Never take for granted these driver-assist systems. Like 1500 Rebel Jr., 2500 Rebel rides on rear coil springs making for a smooth ride with little bed flutter, though the all-terrain tires are predictably noisy compared to all-season offerings.
Continuing the truck’s beauty-and-the-beast duality, the brawny, 6.4-liter Hemi V-8 engine is married to a smooth 8-speed transmission. Flattening the throttle onto I-75 at Exit 93, the 8-speed clocked off seamless shifts before I settled back into cruise control at 75 mph.
Dedicated off-roaders will hook the V-8 up to a trailer where the 2500 Rebel’s max tow capacity increases from the 1500 Rebel’s healthy 11,500 pounds to a spectacular 16,800. That’s enough grunt to plan a big weekend with your buddies towing, say, eight Polaris RZRs with seven riding in the trailer — and another stuffed into the bed with its 3,140-pound payload capacity.
Of course, the HD Rebel will want to join in the fun, too.
But like on-road, its girth needs to be respected off-road, too. To support its weight, the Wrangler all-terrains are pumped to 64 PSI. Ideally, I should have bled them down by half to take on the tortures of Holly Oaks’ landscape. For my short time around the park, I didn’t bother.
That was fine for wide-open throttle donuts on the sandy flats, but the park’s muddy slopes required some tiptoeing lest the beast’s 7,500 pounds become a runaway avalanche. The HD Rebel has a useful locking rear differential for climbs (patience, it takes a while to connect) but you’ll want to pay for the next trim Power Wagon if you want Jeep Rubicon-like, twin-locking differential and front sway bar disconnect. Speaking of Jeeps, 2500 Rebel’s ocean-liner length makes for less breakover angle than the last V-8-powered off-roader I piloted at Holly Oaks, the insane Wrangler 392.
The Wrangler takes the same displacement, 6.4-liter Hemi block and squeezes out another 60 horsepower and 40 pound-feet of torque. Floor Jeep’s 5,100-pound hellion up a Holly Oaks trail and you’ll wake the dead. The HD Rebel was more civilized under my size-15 boot. The Ram’s priority is towing off-roaders and their gear to the trail.
To that end, the interior is practical as well as luxurious.
Jeep/Ram leverages its superb UConnect infotainment system across the lineup — including the HD Rebel. In addition to mirroring my phone, it also provided multiple camera views, the forward-facing view proving most useful as I crawled over Holly Oaks’ trail peaks. But there are other options like a camera with a 55-foot cord should you want to keep an eye on the inside of your trailer.
The center console can be turned into a middle seat to carry a total of six inside the Crew Cab. Legroom is generous, and the rear seats split 70/30. Folding the right seats exposes a flat floor (complete with cupholder for the remaining left-side passenger) so you can load luggage, coolers and gear if the pickup bed is occupied by a motorbike or RZR.
Beneath all the digital wizardry, stitching and leather thrones is a good ol’ rubberized floor. So that when you get home and realize the floor is caked with mud, you can just wash it clean with a hose (ahem, you may need a power washer for the exterior).
Because, come Sunday, you’ll want to throw a coupe of golf bags in back and take the Rebel to the golf club to embarrass your buddy’s light-duty truck.
Next week: 2023 Toyota Crown
2023 Ram 2500 Heavy Duty Rebel
Vehicle type: Front-engine, four-wheel-drive, four-door pickup truck
Price: $68,840, including $1,895 destination charge ($77,395 as tested)
Powerplant: 6.4-liter V-8; 6.7-liter, inline-6 cylinder diesel
Power: 410 horsepower, 429 pound-feet torque (V-8); 370 horsepower, 850 pound-feet torque (diesel)
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic (V-8); six-speed automatic (diesel)
Performance: 0-60 mph, 7.5 seconds (Car and Driver est.); Towing, 16,800 pounds (V-8); 3,140-pound payload
Weight: 7,500 pounds est. (V-8 as tested)
Fuel economy: EPA est. NA; Fuel economy observed while thrashing to Holly Oaks and back: 9 mpg
Report card
Highs: Looks awesome inside and out; tenacious towing
Lows: Ginormous size. . . and price tag
Overall: 4 stars
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.