(link to pics at the bottom)
I know, I know.......most of you are like 'Man, you must
be dumb as hell to give that truck back to DC!'.
Well here's the story, the complete story. When i's finished,
you will realize that I made the best decision that anyone could have made.
June 1998:
I fall in love with, and purchase my 1998 Dodge Dakota
R/T. This truck had it all! I could kick a 'lil ass on the streets, look
cool as hell doing it, and if I needed to, I could press it into service
as a truck by hauling minor things and even get a boat or tow any future
project cars to shows or races.After all, this is still a truck right?
I could still tow 6500 lbs., which ain't too shabby. (the advertised towing
rating on these trucks in 1998 and 1999 was 6500 lbs.)
July 1999:
After having a ball with my truck over the previous year,
I continued my love affair with her and devoted all of my time to her.
She paid me back by doing what she does best: kickin' ass and lookin' good
doing it!
Hey, I even bought an old boat back in March of '99,
although it's a 1965 model and needs to be restored.
I start hearing rumors on the Dakota R/T Mailing List
about DC 'revising' the towing rating on 98 and 99 trucks, and all subsequent
R/Ts, to 2000 lbs. WTF?!
After speaking with several people and listening to several
speculative reasons as to why the truck's towing rating had changed (DC
refuses to let slip why), I speak to a good friend who works in the design
dept. at DC. He tells me the most logical reason as to why the towing rating
was changed. Here it is:
All 5.2 Liter Dakotas have a towing rating of 6500 lbs.
They all have basically the same suspension, tranny, and rearend. On the
Dakota R/T there are two factors that come into play that they either forgot
when doing up the marketing until it was too late, or they knew about it
and deliberately deceived the customers. I will give DC the benefit of
the doubt and say that someone in the marketing team didn't talk to someone
in the design team, and they just goofed.
The two main differences (as they relate to the towing
rating) are this: 1) the 5.2 liter Dakota uses an 8 1/4" rearend (most
of them). The Dakota R/T has a larger diameter 9 1/4" rearend (all of them).2)
The suspension on the Dakota R/T is lowered by one inch at all four corners.
To do this without designing a completely new suspension, DC decides to
just de-arch the rear springs a bit and the front as well. Combine these
two factors together and you have the main problem: With a larger diameter
rearend and a lowered stance, the amount of travel between the rearend
and the bump-stop on the frame goes from 6 1/2" on the 5.2 Liter Dakota
to 5" on the Dakota R/T. Although this is still enough to be able to carry
alot of weight on a trailer, DC engineers and lawyers feel that if a customer
tows at or above the maximum towing rating of 6500 pounds, or above, that
the rearend will continuously 'bottom-out' on the frame bump-stop, which
will possibly weaken the frame and possibly cause a catastrophic failure
of the truck's frame, which in Legal Land would be a big fat No-No!
What makes it even more damning is that I have been told,
but of course I cannot confirm this, that there was an internal memo within
DC that identified this problem. If they were to just ignore it and leave
the towing rating the same, and someone did experience a frame failure
at say....75MPH, then DC would be held liable and would probably lose about
$50-$100 Million.....per occurrence.
So if I were DC, I would have made the same decision.
I would change the towing rating too, but that is where the similarities
between what DC did and what I would have done end.
August 1999:
All owners of 1998 and early 1999 (sold before February
19, 1999) are sent a nice little letter from DC stating that there was
a '...typographical error in some owner's manuals incorrectly stating the
towing rating, which is actually 2000 lbs....' or something very close
to that. I can't find the actual letter I had saved. They never mention
in the letter why the towing rating was different or why the revision only
affected R/Ts and not any other Dakotas.
Needless to say, many, if not most of the members of
the Dakota R/T Mailing List are Hella-Pissed! I mean, 6500 down to 2000
is a big change! Your truck is not really a useful truck any more, unless
you plan on towing nothing more than your lawn mower.People start calling
DC and complaining about the change and start asking what DC plans to do
about it. At first, they plan nothing (ahhhh.....DC is taking the 'Let's
wait to see how pissed they get and then try and appease them' approach).Then
when that didn't work, DC starts offering a deal to some owners that complain.
The deal is that if your truck had the factory installed
Towing Package (which was nothing more than a heavy duty flasher, and a
receiver hitch) that they would refund to you the cost of that option.
Yep, DC thought that giving people back $250 would make them forget that
they effectively now have a big car with a huge trunk and not much more.
When that didn't work, they went to Plan B: Offer to buy back vehicles
from people who are really pissed, but only offer them the sticker price,
minus
any mileage they had accumulated on the truck. What this meant
was that people would have effectively paid for DC's mistake in taking
a hit on mileage. Strangely, some owners took this route figuring that
it was the best way out. DC's problem with all these deals is that they
didn't offer a blanket deal to everyone. They only made the offer to those
who asked for it, and the deal was modified by different regional reps
to varying degrees. Some were asked to pay for mileage, while others were
not. Some were asked to pay one amount for mileage (per mile) while others
were asked to pay a different amount. This only served to enrage some customers
who felt that Customer B was not getting as fair a shake as Customer A
in this whole game.
This all came to a climax in October or November when
four Dakota R/T owners filed suit against DC and they immediately sought
to have the suits granted class-action status. DC finally caved and started
letting a clearing-house handle all of the deals, presumably so that everyone
would get the same offers. They also started making deals that they should
have made in the beginning. Although I believe that the deals were different
depending on if you bought or leased, this is how my offer went down.
My truck was leased. First thing was that DC agreed to
pay off the lease and take the truck back. They paid off whatever the lease
required, no matter if it was over MSRP. In my case, DC had to pay just
over $26k to First Union Bank to obtain the outstanding lease. There was
no charge to me for any mileage, even though the truck had about 31k miles
on it.
On top of the $26k and change they paid First Union,
they then refunded me for all Down payments, Fees, Taxes, and most importantly,
Monthly Payments.It didn't end there. They also refunded me the full price,
including any labor charges, for any modifications that I could produce
receipts for. This included my headers, and grille and various other smaller
items. In all, DC gave me a check for $11,653 *AFTER* they
paid over $26k to pay off my lease.
After these deals were offered by DC, the suits were dropped
by the four owners and now everything seems to be hunky-dory.
The only people who are probably still pissed are those
that took the earlier deals and ended up getting screwed in the process.
You see, when they took those earlier deals, they effectively gave up any
rights they would have to future deals.
December 1999:
On Saturday, December 12, 1999, I turned my R/T back over
to DC. I dropped the truck off where I had bought it at Mike Patton Dodge
in LaGrange, GA and walked out with a check for $11,653.00.
I didn't want to give the truck back, but the deal was
too good to pass up, and I basically drove the truck for a year and a half
for free.
Indeed, it was fun while it lasted.
Click HERE for the last pics ever taken of Jack's Black Dak
*This is not the complete listing of every single offer
scenario that was made or agreed to by DaimlerChrysler, but it represents
all that were relevant to this case and for space reasons, some offer scenarios
have been omitted.
Jack's '98 Dakota R/T Club Cab
I have decided to move all of the pics and info on my 98 R/T to these seperate pages. The reason is simply due to space, and more importantly, space on a single page. The main page was just getting too full and too long to download.
Enjoy!
Click HERE For My '98 R/T's Best 1/4 Mile ET Time Slip !!
SCCA Pro Solo II AutoX
The 19th Annual Mopar Nationals
August 13 - 15 , 1999
National Trail Raceway
Columbus , OH
1999 All Mopar Southern Nationals
May 28th - 30th , 1999
Silver Dollar Raceway
Reynolds , GA
