Pickup Truck Comparison...continued

The four-door extended cab, introduced last year by Dodge, is without a doubt the best thing to happen to pickup trucks since -- well, maybe since the extended cab itself. One would have expected Ford to improve on the idea, but in fact, it's Dodge who went one better -- the shoulder belts are now mounted right in the seats. On the Ford, the shoulder belts hang from the roof, and it's easy to get tangled up while getting in or out of the back.

Perhaps Ford meant this as a warning, because the back seat is a pretty unpleasant place to be; the seat cushion is way too short to provide any thigh support and it juts upward at an awkward angle. We tried fitting toddler Robert's car seat, but even with the lap belt cinched down as tightly as possible, he teetered uncomfortably on the edge of the seat cushion. We took one look at our teetering toddler and said "Fuggetaboutit," opting instead to use the passenger airbag disable switch and strap him into the front.

If you must transport any adults in the back there, at least do the humane thing and give them the phone number of your chiropractor. The Dodge gets a seat that is actually decent to sit in, but the center section of the split bench is fixed and there's precious little legroom for the middle passenger -- Robert's car seat fit nicely, but he had to rest his feet on the front seat's center armrest. Of the two extended cabs, the Dodge is more useable, but if you often haul passengers, look at Ford's four-door "crew cab" -- it boasts proper seats and more room in back than a Checker taxi.

On the Road

Both trucks give a bumpy ride, and on some of LA's sectional freeways, the thump-thump-thump was amplified to the point of severe discomfort. On most roads, though, the Dodge was noticeably smoother -- chalk this up to the use of coil springs in the front versus the leaf springs employed by the Ford. With a heavy engine in front and almost no weight in back, pickups can be skittish handlers, but the Ford did a better job at staying planted on the road, and was much less susceptible to bump steer (the tendency of a truck's back end to jump outwards when it hits bump mid-corner). Both trucks come standard with ABS on the rear wheels only.

Again, because of their weight balance (or, should I say, imbalance), unloaded pickups tend to lock their rear wheels under heavy braking, which can cause them to spin out. Rear ABS keeps the trucks more or less in line, but when I stood on the brake pedal, both of these trucks locked the front wheels and veered off to one side. In a real-world panic stop, I would have wound up in the path of oncoming traffic, and with the front wheels locked, there's almost no way to steer out of harm's way. I wouldn't even consider buying a truck like this without four-wheel ABS, which is optional on both trucks. It's worth noting that the Ford uses four-wheel disc brakes -- as opposed to the Dodge's front disc, rear-drum setup -- which means the Ford will stop better in the wet. But with curb weights around two-and-a-half tons, neither of these trucks will stop on a dime, even under the best conditions.