2006 Heavy-Duty-Truck Comparison Test

Edmunds.com

2006 Heavy-Duty-Truck Comparison Test

When you need to do some serious hauling, a 1-ton truck is as good as its gets. We round up the three major players to find out which one is the heaviest hitter in the heavy-duty class.

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kwethington1

First, Edmunds provides a valuable source for researching the buying and selling and rating of vehicles. Unlike Kelly, it does not seem to be significantly influenced by dealerships that bought KBB.

I am a retired tool and die maker/machinist, journeyman state certified. I know what the engine tolerances are for all major brands. Usually the tighter the tolerance and the smaller out of balance limits means a longer lasting engine. Of the the brands above, only Ford matches most of the Japanese brands (still looser than Honda). GM is second, and Dodge is third. In fact, Dodge has, the last time I checked, the loosest tolerances overall, of any major manufacturer. Further, too often in books and magazines that test and compare and rate vehicles, they fail to understand that some vehicles, especially sports cars, are terribly expensive to up keep. Check out how much it costs to change the oil of a 911 and how often you have change the oil and rotate and rebalance the tires.
I understand why the writers give such outstanding scores to these 1/4 million dollar cars. If they included value per cost, the cars they get to drive, but could never own, would not be available to them. I do not doubt the score above as a new vehicle right off the line. I would like to see what 1,000 new truck buys of each brand have to say after five years, including the ones that trades it in or sold it. That kind of follow-up, would be the most valuable, but is never done.