Ram – which is having trouble selling trucks, probably because fewer and fewer people can afford to buy one – is apparently going to try to address that by offering an “Express” iteration of the 2026 Ram 1500 that will sticker for $44,495.
The problem, though, is that this would make the ’26 Ram 1500 Express several thousand dollars more expensive than the least expensive versions of the 2025 Ram 1500 – which starts at $40,275 for the Quad cab iteration and $43,025 for the Crew cab iteration.
So, while it may be true that the ’26 Ram 1500 Express will cost less than other iterations of the 2026 Ram 1500, it looks like it’s still going to cost more than the least expensive iterations of the 2025 Ram 1500.
In other word, it will actually be less rather than more affordable.
The situation calls to mind that scene in the movie adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 starring John Hurt as Winston Smith, the novel’s main character, in which there is a discussion about the chocolate ration being increased by Big Brother. In fact, the chocolate ration had been decreased – but the expectation was that everyone express gratitude to Big Brother for increasing it.
To be fair – to Ram – the cost of everything has gone ballistic, including trucks. It is not the least bit surprising that the 2026 Ram 1500s will cost more (for the same, by the way) than they cost this year. Ram cannot remain in the truck-selling business by losing money on each sale. So sticker prices go up rather than down. And we are supposed to be grateful that – as regards the 1500 Express – they have gone up somewhat less vs. the rest.
But why not offer an actually more affordable iteration of the Ram 1500? Or of any current half-ton truck, for that matter? Anyone? 
Bueller?
It was once the case – for most of the history of trucks – that they cost less to buy than most cars. This was because most truck manufacturers offered trucks that were not equipped with everything that comes standard in a new half-ton truck today, including such as amenities as air conditioning, power windows and locks. These things were extra-cost options as recently as the ’90s. So also automatic transmissions.
Let alone 20 inch “rims” – or adaptive cruise control with automatic emergency braking and a 7 inch LCD Clownscreen – all standard equipment with the 2026 Ram 1500 Express.
Herewith an example of how it used to be – when trucks were affordable – from my own experience. After graduating from college in the late 1980s, a friend of mine bought a brand-new 1989 Ford F-150 to use in his fledgling roofing business.
It stickered for just over $11,000 back then – which comes to about $29,000 today (in “inflation adjusted” dollars). For a full-size, half-ton truck with an eight foot bed.
Today, that sum isn’t enough to buy you a mid-sized truck with a five foot bed, such as the current Ford Ranger ($33,080 to start) and the current Ranger costs about twice as much as the no-longer-available compact-sized Ranger Ford stopped selling back in 2011.
Now, my friend’s ’89 F-150 didn’t even have carpets – much less 20 inch “rims.” You rolled down the windows by hand and you shifted gears by hand. It did not have a 300-plus horsepower turbocharged engine. It had a simple, durable, in-line six cylinder engine that got the job done. My friend was able to buy this truck because he could afford it – as a young guy in his early 20s. His son is about the same age today as he was back then. He cannot afford Ram’s new “affordable” iteration of the Ram 1500.
It would be a stretch for his dad – who is a middle-aged guy now.
The problem here – for Ram and the others – is essentially the same problem besetting Harley Davidson. The latter sells bikes that – for the most part – only older guys can afford and even they are increasingly not able to afford them. Not many guys – even older guys – can afford to spend $30k on a motorcycle.
And not many guys – period – can afford to spend just shy of $45k on a truck anymore, either.
Harley could fix its problem by going back to selling less baroque bikes that young guys especially could afford – because it is not yet a legal requirement that motorcycles be afflicted with multiple air bags and since they are by nature efficient (as regards how much gasoline they burn) they are largely exempt from the cost-escalating effect of having to comply with federal fuel efficiency and “emissions” regulations.
Vehicles – trucks – are not exempt from those cost-adding factors and there is another factor that makes it extremely difficult for any manufacturer of vehicles – cars and trucks – to offer what in earlier times was commonly known as a “stripped” version without such things as air conditioning, power windows and all the rest.
Modern vehicles are designed to be essentially one way – loaded – as regards most of the amenities that were once available but optional. Drivetrains, for instance, are designed with AC as part of the drivetrain. Building a drivetrain without AC would entail reconfiguring production lines/assembly procedures and that would cost the manufacturers money. It is cheaper for them to build one-size-fits-all.
Of course, it is more expensive for us.
That was ok – or rather, that worked – when a sufficiency of people were able to absorb the cost, as by making “lower” payments for six years rather than higher ones for four or five. It no longer works because of the rising cost of everything else.
When people are having difficulty absorbing the cost of food, a $45k truck is not “affordable.”
It is merely less expensive.
The distinction is important.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
If you like items like the Baaaaaa! baseball cap pictured below, you can find that and more at the EPautos store!
Meltdown at Ford:
‘Ford’s first-quarter net income plunged to $471 million from $1.3 billion a year earlier, as EV losses and production halts took a toll, the company said Monday.
‘Revenue dropped to $40.7 billion from $42.8 billion.
‘The electric-vehicle division lost $800 million, down from $1.3 billion, helped by lower material costs and stronger pricing. Adjusted pretax income fell to $1 billion from $2.8 billion.
‘Ford suspended full-year guidance, citing uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs, which it said could cost $1.5 billion.
“It’s a pretty dynamic situation. I think this is all really new for all of us,” said CEO Jim Farley. He added the financial impact remains “huge numbers,” though lower than for many rivals.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ford-shares-slip-2-after-net-income-plunge-suspended-guidance
Wall Street is all about sales and earnings growth. Ford, crippled by the never-ending red ink of its EeeVee division, offers neither.
How ‘Lightning Jim’ Farley holds onto his job is a total mystery to me. If engaged to design Ford’s annual report, I will plaster it with memes of a pointing Lighting Jim, saying ‘I did that.‘
For decades the U.S. dollar has enjoyed the benefit of once being backed by gold and silver.. the detachment was complete around 1971 yet most regular folks carried on like the currency was still real. It’s not.
None of these ‘clown world’ disparities could have taken place with a solid currency.. everything we are seeing today is a direct result of counterfeit money printed by a private bank that claims to be above government.
Hyper inflation, hugely oversized gov “fat lazy addicted to debt Americans” helicopter money etc.. NON of this could exist with honest sound money.
We should be able to go to our local AMC dealer and buy a brand new 2025 AMX 390EFI 4Spd for about $2799 today.. but that has been taken away by the private bankers who own the Fed.
Question: Rather than the symptoms. When will we begin to address the actual problem?
END THE FED
I owned a 1965 W200, here is a picture of the dash from another website, (not mine):
https://www.musclevintagecars.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/34-17.jpg
It came with a manual choke, no airbags and no seat belts. It had an all metal dash that never cracked from the sun or wore out. The interior door panels were also metal, the windows regulators worked for 50 years with no service.
The round headlights could be bought at Walmart for $5.
The 318 engine was indestructible, it had tool trays on either side, the top of the front fender doubled as a place to sit, with your legs inside and feet on top of the frame.
I built a bumper out of 8″ channel iron with a PTO driven winch I bought from Vintage Power Wagon out of Iowa.
So why in the hell doesn’t Dodge just build that truck again?
That is an awesome truck and one I’d like to own. But could you imagine an iPhone-addicted Gen. Z kid trying to make heads or tails of a manual choke, much less a manual transmission?
When I first got the truck it was 40 years old and I removed the front seat to have new fabric, I found the dealer invoice, it sold for $2,000 (and it’s 4wd).
While Harley doesn’t sell a cheap, simple bike but Suzuki does. You could get a brand new DRZ400 for $7,200 in 2024. That is a throw-back, essentially unchanged for decades, carb and all. Although they finally had to in 2025 update the platform to fuel injection in the DR-Z4S. But it’s still pretty cheap, $9k. Suzuki doesn’t sell many of these bikes. That doesn’t jive with the theory presented here. People in the U.S. don’t really seem to want stripped base vehicles. Big 3 don’t sell poverty spec trucks, only fleet buyers buy them. You can’t really get anything other than 4 door small/midsize trucks because people don’t buy regular or extended cabs in big enough numbers. Cheap credit and debt have spoiled consumers. Until people have to save for large purchases I don’t think real value will ever return. You can’t just buy a fridge, it’s gotta be Internet of Things wizbang. You can’t just get a phone, it’s got to be a mini computer smart phone. Nothing is made to last or be repaired. All you can do is shrug your shoulders.
And should mention that new DRZ4S is throttle by wire (ugh) and made in Japan, so that price is tariff inclusive presumably. It’s improved with an aluminum frame and some other things. So it’s a pretty decent bike really even for the inflation cheapened money. It’s not powerful, it’s not comfortable for long pulls, it’s street legal dirt bike. But it goes and take you places, so not really that much different than a 1989 F150 XL in principle.
‘To be fair – to Ram – the cost of everything has gone ballistic, including
truckstariffs.’ — ericWhen Donnie Fubar’s 25-percent parts tariff fully kicks in, that low, low $44,495 price point is gonna be as nostalgic as 30-cent gasoline and 50-cent draft beers.
The American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) enacted in 1992 requires the label to include the percentage of U.S./Canadian parts content, the country of assembly, and the countries of origin for the engine and transmission. Sounds ‘transparent,’ right?
But don’t you dare add the new tariff rates to that label, or you’ll incur the titanic wrath of the Orange Emperor.
Meanwhile I am stewing over not getting invited to the Met Gala cocktail party:
‘The Costume Institute benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was guest curated by Monica Miller, chair of the Africana studies department at Barnard College, whose 2009 book inspired the collection. At a cocktail party to toast the opening, the stars sported their best take on the black dandy or, in Kim Kardashian’s case, a quaintrelle.
‘“I’m not sure how to pronounce it,” Ms. Kardashian said …’
https://archive.ph/ESc8I#selection-651.61-663.55
Well, LA-DI-DAH! *hurls an empty vodka bottle into the wastebasket with a loud clatter*
I remember how much time it used to take to pick through the options list. But you could build “your” car. With each year the manufacturers more “options” were bundled into “option packages”. Less choice for you. Now it is basically pick a trim level and the manufacturer decides what “options” you get with it. I sure to miss Burger Chef with its “Works Bar”. They handed you your burger and you piled on what you wanted. I guess choices were too much for man to handle.
When I began working the company trucks came with heat and automatic transmission. That was it. No radio, other than the dispatch two-way radios that were installed after delivery. Most of the boys had boom boxes in the footwells so at least they had something.
When the first round of “radios included” trucks started arriving, the GM had them removed. Of course the boys, being technically minded put their own aftermarket radios in, and the supervisors looked the other way.
These days the trucks come loaded up with everything a top-end car had in the 1980s. But they also spend a lot of time at the dealer getting repairs too.
2025’s $45k truck is my ’01 Silverado rc/sb/2wd – which stickered brand new for just under $25k. A decently equipped Chevy ex-cab 4wd 1/2 ton in ’01 went for around $30k – which is roughly $55k in today’s FedBux.
(But you COULD STILL GET A 1/2 ton WORKTRUCK for around $20k – which would be $36k today.)
In some ways you are getting far more with the “tech”, suite of nonsense “safety” systems and increased towing & payloads (and also increased complexity and higher maintenance costs on the back end.)
The entire thing is more evidence of a collapsing currency and grossly stagnated wages.
Hi Flip,
It’s an example of this bothersome rip-tide effect. Most people seem to want to spend $50k-plus on a truck outfitted with all this stuff. Even though – I would be willing to bet – most can’t afford it. But because they are willing to go into debt to finance it, people like us who would prefer not to, who would prefer a less adorned and less expensive truck, are pushed out of the market because there is nothing for us to buy anymore.
IMO this is all a weird doom loop dominated by a collapsing currency and an unwillingness of consumers to acknowledge it and adjust their spending habits accordingly.
As much as many of us opine that there should be more affordable buying options for vehicles, the majority of consumers seem to disagree.
Take the recent WRX you documented and the elimination of the base version.
Subaru says “there were no buyers…they all wanted the Limited or Premium, so we cancelled the base.”
But how many base WRXs did they even produce and stock at the Subaru stores?
Seems like there’s a pattern of “we don’t build them, so nobody buys them, so we cancel them.”
Too many US Americans are fat, lazy and addicted to debt.
Needs to be a sea change in consumer habits.
My wise grandma – a child of the depression – would refer to today’s consumer (far rarer in the 80’s) as having “champagne taste…on a beer budget.”
I agree, Flip –
I often feel as though I’m living in a Clown World. I suppose because it is a Clown World!
It reminds me of Robin Williams’ quip in Mrs. Doubtfire. When he says “we came here looking for intelligent life. Ooops we made a mistake”. Humanity seems to have taken that line as a challenge.
Exactly…same with the Ford Maverick. When these were announced, I was looking forward to buying a low-end version, figuring that with a base sticker under 20K, even a moderately equipped example would be affordable. But seems that all of them are loaded to the gills, stickering at $35K to $40K. Meanwhile, I’m still driving my ’08 Fusion that I bought in 2011.
“The entire thing is more evidence of a collapsing currency and grossly stagnated wages.”
Exactly!
To an extent, the comparison is apples to oranges.
A midsize truck is now the same size and has more towing capability than a 1/2 ton did 40 years ago.
There is no functional equivalent to the “mini” trucks of yesteryear like the Chevy Luv, Datsun’s, Toyota’s, etc. The chicken tax drove all these out of the market.
Let’s face it, today’s obese Merican’s cannot even fit into what used to be a midsize truck. They would never tolerate vinyl seats, manual windows, rubber floor mats, plate steel step bumpers with the dealer name stamped into them 🤣
Never forget that a large percentage of entitled and feminized truck bro’s can’t even drive a manual transmission and have absolutely no inclination or ability to work on their own vehicle including a basic oil change.
They think nothing of tossing the OEM wheels and tires for $10k of wheels and a lift kit to get the “stance”. Same for replacing the OEM bumpers with steel bumpers and brush busters that look cool but offer no additional protection. It’s all just for show . . . . and financed at the time of purchase.
Then they were wonder why they are underwater on the note from the minute they roll off the dealer lot.
Around here my 98’ Toyota Camry has more dirt, mud, and dust on it from driving dirt roads than 98% of the truck bro’s rigs I see on the road.
I can immediately tell who is a local and “belongs” just by how clean their truck is or isn’t.
Hi Burn,
Yes – but most of the mid-sized trucks (that are effectively full-size now, at least by early 2000s and prior standards) typically come standard with a five foot bed; a six foot bed is the maximum available. Thus, these big trucks can’t accommodate more in their beds than my ’02 Frontier – which has a six foot bed – can.
Which is how they get you to “upgrade” to the full size payment.
The reality is that a 6’ bed on my B2600 does a whole lot more haulin’ than most full size 1/2 ton trucks around here do – ya know, cause they can’t scratch the paint in the bed – thus the financed “bed liner”.
And here’s the kicker – go get that 1/2 ton for $50k+.
None of the local equipment rental places will let you rent & tow something like a small tractor or mini excavator unless you’re driving a 3/4 ton.
Cha Ching. Might as well step right on up to a 2500 if ya wanna do any real work. They got ya coming and going!
Keep in mind, there’s currently a business model for LEASING WHEELS & TIRES.
Yup.
My 98 Ranger had a 7 foot bed. Can you even get a 7 foot bed in a half ton anymore?
I’ve got the window sticker for my ‘64 C10 – $2250 FOB to El Centro, Ca. With a 230 straight six, 3 speed on the column, “Thriftmaster” heater, vinyl bench seat and 8’1” longbed. (Online inflation calculator shows this as $22,211 in 2025 dollars).
Aside from the rocker panels remodeled by who knows what, rusty cab corners, a really bad repaint and needing new wood in the bed, everything else has survived 61 years with basic maintenance. Let’s see a new one pull that off. Even the aftermarket Motorola AM radio still works just fine, yet my wife’s Explorer is on “infotainment screen” number 3.
2250 x .7734 = 1740 Troy ounces of US minted one dollar silver coin back in 1964.
Silver per Troy ounce is 30 plus dollars. Those button batteries are 40 percent silver.
An industrial metal, makes for supply and demand, silver is bought and sold for a reason.
1740 Troy ounces time 30 USD equals 52,207 dollars for the C10 using the current price of silver.
2250 US minted silver dollars is now equal to 52,207 dollars in 2025 Clownbux.
How to rob a nation of all of its silver and gold in circulation did happen.
Next metal to rob from circulation is the penny.
“Thriftmaster” — El Guapo
Like the late Richard Nixon’s ‘Republican cloth coat,’ ‘Thriftmaster’ is so mid-20th century threadbare. We don’t do spartan no more.
To sell it today, they’d have to call it the ‘Pimpmastah,’ finished in iridescent leopard spots with hand-polished inlays of tungsten cowhide.
>brand-new 1989 Ford F-150
I paid $7,000 & change (cash) for my 1989 F150. Single cab, 8′ bed, 300 CID fuel injected inline 6, Borg-Warner T-18 4 speed, 2WD.
Still my daily driver, though I have owned several sedans in the interim. Replaced the engine & catalytic converter @ ~25 years. I have no interest in any of the new models.
Buddy’s tail gate mechanism on his late model Ram broke with around 25,000 miles on it. Seized even though it was used regularly. I pointed to an older truck and pointed out that it’s design will work forever but won’t slow down the infamous “Tail Gate Fairy” who does late night pick ups. 🙂
Power door locks, ABS, cameras, 6 or more airbags and a lot of other stuff is now mandated by GovCo and that’s the real reason you can’t afford a new car. Once the auto manufactures realized that most people bought AC, power windows, automatic transmissions and cruise control it was inevitable that the base model came with it.
We sadly live in a world now where AC is standard but blue paint is an expensive option. 🙁
A friend of mine, their great-uncle’s first house cost $30,000 dollars back in the day. Hell, the vehicle I drive now cost more than that! Thank you, worthless dollar, too, for helping to make everything under the sun far more expensive than it should have been. Add in the “saaaaafety crap no one wanted or asked for, along with the “extras” you mentioned, Eric, that some of us were fine with not having in a vehicle, and is it any wonder new vehicles are unaffordable? But maybe that is the point: To ultimately make vehicle ownership only for the wealthy. As for the 1984 video: I am trying to remember….did not the rations go from 30 to 25? But that was an increase….
Hi Shadow. “….did not the rations go from 30 to 25? But that was an increase….”
Newspeak one of the tenants of 1984 being that if you can control the language you can control the mind resulting in people that will not be able to conceptualize rebellion to the state. Fahrenheit 451 just differently in that there they burned books instead.