The story
Prior to the 1970s, Dodge had maintained a separate marque for trucks, Fargo Trucks, primarily for use outside the United States. After that point, all trucks made by Chrysler were distributed under the Dodge marque.
In June 2009, when Chrysler emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Fiat Group received a 20% stake in Chrysler Group LLC and Sergio Marchionne was appointed CEO, replacing CEO Robert Nardelli. On June 10 that year, substantially all of Chrysler's assets were sold to "New Chrysler", organized as Chrysler Group LLC. The federal government provided support for the deal with US$8 billion in financing at near 21%. Under CEO Marchionne, "World Class Manufacturing" or WCM, a system of thorough manufacturing quality, was introduced and several products re-launched with quality and luxury. The Ram, Jeep, Dodge, SRT and Chrysler divisions were separated to focus on their own identity and brands.
Ram Trucks was established as a division of Chrysler in 2009 as a spin-off from Dodge using the name of the Dodge Ram line of pickups that is now sold under the Ram banner. According to Chrysler, the Ram Trucks brand will concentrate on "real truck customers", rather than casual truck buyers who buy trucks for image or style.
The Fiat Ducato cargo van design has been adopted and is sold as the Ram ProMaster in North American markets, filling the gap created when Daimler ended production of the Dodge Sprinter in 2008. The goal was to increase truck sales "from today's 280,000 to 415,000 by 2014".
Executives at Chrysler stated their intention to compete in the semi-trailer truck category with Ram, a possibility that was aided by Fiat's ownership of Iveco and an already available network of Dodge dealers. Ram trucks are marketed separately from Dodge cars; former Ram Division President Fred Diaz stated, "Ram trucks are not a Dodge model. Ram will always be 'vinned' (Vehicle Identification Number) as a Ram. We need to continue to market as Ram so Dodge can have a different brand identity: hip, cool, young, energetic. That will not fit the campaign for truck buyers. The two should have distinct themes."
On July 21, 2011, Fiat bought the Chrysler shares held by the U.S. Treasury, increasing its stake in the company.
In April 2013, Diaz left Ram Trucks to serve as vice president of Nissan's divisional sales and marketing. He was replaced by Reid Bigland.
In August 2014, Ram Trucks CEO Reid Bigland was tapped to lead the Alfa Romeo brand in North America. It was announced that the new head of the Ram Trucks brand would be longtime Chrysler employee Robert Hegbloom, who joined Chrysler in 1986 and had been a director for Dodge. In October 2018, Bigland was promoted to CEO of Ram Trucks. Shortly thereafter, he discovered that the division had been misreporting sales figures and turned over that information to the U.S. government for investigation. Allegedly, Fiat Chrysler cut his bonuses in retaliation, which resulted in Bigland filing a whistleblower lawsuit against them. In March 2020, Bigland announced his resignation.
Read the full text
In December 2024, former CEO of Dodge and Ram, Tim Kuniskis came out of retirement to once again become CEO of Ram.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ram Trucks, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3