1998 Dodge Ram 1500 Pickup Reviews & Ratings

The Ram Quad Cab offers owners a cavernous interior with conventional front doors and rear-hinged rear doors. The absence of a B-pillar makes it much easier to get in or out of the rear seat; it also makes it much easier to stick something behind the front seats. The door handles for the rear doors are integrated into the front interior face of the rear door, and this setup provides a more secure dual locking system for all four doors when the rear door is locked.

The instrument panel of all Dodge Rams has been changed for 1998 to a much more modern layout. This includes a new steering wheel design, a new set of reduced-force air bags, with a lockout for the passenger bag, a gaping storage hole, an extra power point, and new cupholders that will handle anything.

In order to get rid of a potentially messy array of dangling seat belts in the wide-open Quad Cab doorway, the designers have integrated the front seat belts into the seats themselves on all Rams. The console has also been redesigned. Other new interior features for 1998 include heated power mirrors, illuminated power door locks and window switches, and an optional security alarm system.

The cloth-covered seats in our test truck were plush, supportive and comfortable, not to mention nicely upholstered in a multicolored speckle-and-gray material. The front seat in all Rams is divided 40/20/40, with a huge fold-down central section that doubles as armrest and writing table. There's a substantial storage box inside the armrest portion with divided spaces for coins, cassettes, maps or even a laptop computer.

The rear seat in the Quad Cab is the same seat used in the conventional extended cab version of the truck. It's handy for children, pets and petite adults, but it is not comfortable for adults on long trips. The rear seat is fitted with two shoulder belts and one lap belt. The bench portion of the seat flips up out of the way effortlessly from either side for hauling tools or cargo.

Our Ram 1500 was fitted with the 5.2-liter V8 and a 5-speed manual. Driving it made us think of the old muscle car drag racing days on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. It's that powerful and that much fun to drive.

It may not be ideally suited for a commuting situation where a lot of shifting would be involved, but it's great fun on the boulevards. It's also a really flexible, driveable combination in off-road situations, much more so than the automatic. The low-end torque of the engine and the low gearing in first and second gears make it easy to get around in most driving situations.

Front suspension on a Ram 4X4 is a coil spring setup with four leading arms, a track bar and a stabilizer bar to keep the front axle assembly located fore and aft and side to side. Rear suspension is a conventional live axle with leaf springs designed to carry heavy loads. We found the suspension delightfully smooth and supple on the street, aided by those big fat Goodyear RT/S tires. But the body is so high off the ground that some passengers--particularly females--had a great deal of entry/exit difficulty even with a grab bar on the A-pillar.

One thing we didn't like about the Ram's dynamics last year was the steering, which was light enough and quick enough, but had an enormous dead space on center, and seemed to require constant left-right adjustments to stay straight ahead. That has been fixed this year with a new steering gear setup and new steering geometry, and the feel of the truck is much more precise than earlier models.

Braking, with discs in front, drums in rear, was exemplary. The Ram stops quickly with superb straightline stability. Our truck was free of squeaks, rattles and shudders, and everything about it seemed a bit tighter, a bit smoother, a bit more high-quality than previous models we've driven.