While we’ve towed and performed MPG tests with our long-term 2019 Ram Rebel before, this video shows a much more complex test. We recently headed to Moab, Utah with our project Cheap Jeep, our project ’87 Suzuki Samurai and our Land Rover Dico recovery vehicle.
Given the questionable reliability of all three vehicles, we opted to play it safe and bring a large enough trailer to haul the Jeep and Samurai – just in case. For this, we opted to bring our (nearly) brand-new 2019 Ram Rebel long term vehicle. As equipped, it can tow up to 11,000 lbs. Given our trail weighed about 5,000 lbs, our Suzuki about 2,030 lbs and our Jeep at about 3,400 lbs – we could pull it off… once again, if needed.
We’ve been a bit underwhelmed with the 2019 Ram Rebel’s economy numbers thus far. In tests we’ve already conducted, the numbers were less than expected. You can click (here) to read more about that.
While we never needed the trailer for any mechanical failure of our three vehicles, we did opt to use it nevertheless as the tiny Suzuki Samurai’s engine was simply too slow to safely drive over the pass. Slow moving trucks were forced to pass it too often and it was deemed unsafe by our standards.
Fortunately, this gave us an opportunity to to a towing run from Moab, UT back towards Boulder, Colorado. This would be uphill, in snow, at night towing about 7,000-lbs. We opted to used the internal readouts of the 2019 Ram Rebel and the numbers we deduced from our pump calculations.
In this video, Andre and Nathan face a slow, plodding, white-knuckle drive in dangerous conditions. All for the sake of discovering if the 2019 Ram Rebel can redeem itself from our last MPG test. Enjoy!
