I’ve spent five years telling people how much I love our 2003 GMC Yukon Denali.
I meant it. I still mean it.
That old GMT800 has a 6.0-litre V8, roughly 276,000 kilometres and a history with our family that a newer truck can’t manufacture. It has taken us on road trips, hauled our gear and started when I needed it to start. In five years, it has never required a tow truck.
Our 2017 Ram 1500 Laramie managed that particular milestone two days after coming home.
So if you’re expecting me to announce that I’ve discovered the superior dependability of a used Ram, settle down. That is absolutely not where this is going.
But now that I’m getting to spend some time driving Boomer instead of discussing Boomer with people standing near a hoist, I have to admit something.
I like driving the Ram more.
The Yukon didn’t fail. I needed a damn bed.
The reason for buying a pickup wasn’t complicated.
I needed somewhere to put an e-bike, camping equipment, drone gear and the other things that seem to multiply whenever we try to leave the house.
The Yukon can carry a remarkable amount of stuff. Unfortunately, putting a fat-tire e-bike inside it means the bike is now sharing accommodations with everything else. Loading becomes a small engineering project, and whatever dirt comes home on the bike comes home inside the vehicle.
A pickup bed solves that.
This wasn’t a case of an old SUV becoming useless. My needs changed. Apparently, I could acknowledge that without first declaring everything I liked about the Yukon to be bullshit.
Although buying the Ram did give the Yukon several opportunities to look smug.
Boomer’s introduction was a bit of a shitshow
We bought a truck. The starter quit. There was a tow.
Then came the tires, the discovery that the truck already had leveling struts, seized adjustment hardware and lower control-arm repairs before the alignment could be finished.
It was considerably more adventure than I had scheduled for the first few weeks.
The dealership has agreed to cover the control-arm repair, which is a good outcome and deserves mentioning. The beginning was frustrating, but that doesn’t mean everyone involved gets painted as a villain.
It also doesn’t mean I’m ready to deliver a final verdict on the truck. We’re still early in this chapter. Boomer has plenty left to prove.
For a while, though, the ownership comparison was almost offensively simple.
The Yukon was in the driveway, ready to go.
The Ram was somewhere else, requiring a conversation.
Then you get in the Ram
Here’s where the old-truck argument gets uncomfortable.
I love the Yukon. It is genuinely comfortable. I’m not going to rewrite five years of family trips and pretend we were suffering in some primitive agricultural device.
But the Ram’s cab is quieter. The ride is nicer. The whole thing feels more settled and more refined.
You get in, shut the door and notice the difference.
You don’t have to consult a specification sheet. You don’t need a salesman explaining the premium ownership experience while finding another document for you to sign.
It just feels nicer.
The Ram has a coil-spring rear suspension with a solid axle—not independent rear suspension, despite what I initially called it. Whatever terminology belongs underneath it, I like what it does from the driver’s seat.
I bought a pickup because I needed a bed. I didn’t expect the quieter, more comfortable daily experience to become such a large part of why I enjoy owning it.
Apparently, I like having things that work
Sometimes an upgrade is less about gaining some revolutionary feature and more about no longer looking at a list of jobs.
No rust spots catching my eye.
No headliner peeling down.
A sunroof that functions.
Heated seats that actually heat.
That last one shouldn’t feel like a luxury breakthrough, but here we are.
Then there are the cooled seats.
I’ve never had cooled seats in my life. Now I have them, and I understand why people become unreasonable about certain options.
You can spend years telling yourself you don’t need something. Then you try it and discover that your standards have quietly moved while you weren’t paying attention.
I don’t need a truck to refrigerate my backside.
I am, however, pleased that this one is willing.
The Yukon’s little flaws never stopped me loving it. But they still existed. Being attached to a vehicle doesn’t somehow repair the headliner.
And getting into the Ram without immediately noticing another thing I intend to fix is enjoyable.
Even if I’m already making a completely separate list of things I intend to modify.
Apparently, there is no cure.
The technology is good enough. That’s a compliment.
Boomer is a 2017. It isn’t the latest anything.
That suits me.
The Bluetooth connects. I can make phone calls. I can listen to my music. The navigation seems to work. There’s a backup camera.
Those are useful improvements in my daily driving.
I don’t need CarPlay badly enough to turn the dashboard into another project right now. I’m not looking to manage text messages while driving. My phone and the truck are already doing the things I actually want them to do.
Good enough doesn’t mean disappointing.
Sometimes good enough means you can stop shopping for a solution to a problem you don’t have.
I’ve spent plenty of time complaining about automotive technology becoming unnecessarily complicated. I still stand behind that. But I’m allowed to enjoy Bluetooth and a backup camera without surrendering my membership in the Grumpy Old Bastards Association.
Useful features are useful.
The problem starts when the feature becomes more work than the task it was supposed to simplify.
So far, the Ram’s everyday technology has been pleasantly straightforward.
It’s also a truck I’m proud to own
This is the part people sometimes dance around because it sounds less sensible than talking about cargo capacity.
I like looking at the Ram.
I like walking up to it. I like the two-tone paint, the Laramie interior and how it sits with the Toyos on it. There are details I want to change, but I liked the truck before I started imagining those changes.
It feels like a nicer vehicle.
That matters.
I’m not talking about impressing a stranger at a traffic light. I’m talking about spending my own money on something, getting into it every day and feeling pleased with the decision.
After the opening round of repairs, that feeling took a little longer to arrive than expected.
But it’s there.
Blake loves the truck, too. Our imaginary shop manager approves of Boomer, which is reassuring given his limited patience for meetings and complete lack of financial accountability.
The Yukon has memories. The Ram is starting to collect them.
I still think the Yukon would smoke it off the line
For all this talk about refinement, I still think the old Denali would give Boomer an embarrassing introduction from a stop.
That is a seat-of-the-pants impression, not a timed test.
I haven’t produced a spreadsheet. I haven’t staged a drag race. I’m not declaring the results of an event that hasn’t happened.
But that 6.0-litre AWD Yukon feels eager when you ask it to go. It doesn’t seem particularly concerned that it is old enough to have opinions about mortgage rates.
The Ram is comfortable, quiet and considerably nicer inside.
The Yukon still feels like it might call the Ram soft and then leave.
I appreciate that about it.
Better to drive doesn’t automatically mean cheaper to own
The Yukon has already earned my trust.
The Ram hasn’t had time to.
I suspect the Yukon may remain the more dependable vehicle for us. I certainly can’t claim otherwise based on a few weeks of Ram ownership, especially when those weeks included a tow truck.
The Yukon also wins the cost argument. We had roughly $10,000 invested in it over about five years, including buying it. The Ram cost $26,900 before we began this latest round of automotive enthusiasm.
Those are very different commitments.
A quieter cabin doesn’t cancel the purchase price. Cooled seats don’t pay a repair bill. Being pleased with your truck doesn’t make its expensive parts less expensive.
But cost and dependability are not the only reasons to choose a vehicle.
If they were, I could keep the Yukon indefinitely and continue wrestling the bike through the back.
I wanted a pickup. I wanted the bed. And now that I’m driving it, I appreciate the rest of the package more than I expected.
That doesn’t invalidate the Yukon.
It explains the Ram.
I’m allowed to love one and move on to the other
The Yukon is still here as I write this. Its chapter isn’t fully closed.
Selling something that has served your family well is strange. You remember what it did for you, while a prospective buyer understandably looks at what it might need next.
I’ll miss it when it goes.
I’ll still have things to say about GMT800 ownership. Five years with a vehicle doesn’t evaporate because another set of keys arrives.
But Driftwood Motoring was never supposed to require me to own the same truck forever.
Boomer is the vehicle we’re building the next chapter around: using it, improving it, finding out what works and reporting whatever decides to become expensive.
Hopefully with fewer tow trucks.
I still love the Yukon. I still respect what it has done for us.
I just needed a bed—and discovered that I really like a quiet cab, a nice ride and a cold backside.
That seems like a reasonable place to start.
