If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that you can’t always trust the internet. You think I would’ve learned that after having my identity stolen for the fourth time while trying to claim yet another year-old iPhone, but alas. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have believed that this was really the 2025 Ram HD if the company’s spokespeople didn’t send these pictures to us directly—but they did.
My first issue is with the 2025 Ram HD Rebel’s grille. It’s cut into so many segments, the various directional lines are making me a little cross-eyed. The visual confusion is only worsened by the clear-black headlights, which are bisected by matte plastic. I couldn’t tell that until I zoomed way in—I thought they were all one piece at first.
I’m sure the gaping maw is better for cooling. And trust me: You want your hard-working diesel pickup to stay cool when you’re towing a camper, or an excavator, or whatever. It’s just that Ram was seemingly able to achieve good enough cooling on the other models with different grilles that look better (not great, mind you, but better).
Just look at the whole family here. The Tradesman Chassis Cab in the middle is pretty inoffensive, with the most dominant visual elements being those horizontal lines we’re already used to. Then there’s the red truck on the right, whose grille is just plain chrome with a body-color surround.
Still, the split headlights look vaguely AI-generated, and the haphazard perpendicular stacking of the grille vanes comes off like DALL-E making up a garbled mess as it goes along. If the pickup was yellow and black, I might be tricked into thinking we were looking at one of those fake Caterpillar truck renderings.
I’m not sure what was wrong with the previous Ram HD’s front end. Really, I thought it was one of the most handsome new trucks on the market. This feels like they’re messing with something just to change it, and the result is worse than what they had before.
But hey—at least there’s still a Cummins under the hood.
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