By Warren Brown
The little wagon was a pleasant surprise, equipped with the best four-cylinder engine I have driven. Because of what seemed to be its strictly utilitarian nature — it is often used as a small cargo van in the inner cities of Europe — I expected to dislike what is now sold in the United States as the Ram ProMaster City Wagon SLT.
But I loved the compact Italian-American ride — absolutely loved it.
The engine is the thing, one of the best features of this package, anyway. Ram, the truck division of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles since 2009, calls the petrol-fueled 2.4-liter power plant the TigerShark Multiair — a fanciful but functionally apt appellation. It feels like a little tiger under the hood, growling, eager to run.
That is not to say that the front-wheel-drive ProMaster City is exceptionally fast. After all, it is a wagon (in five-seat passenger format) often sold and used — stripped of rear seats and rear side windows — as a city delivery van. It moves from 0 to 60 mph in a bit over nine seconds.
But a racetrack start is not what you are looking for in a vehicle like this.Whether you buy the ProMaster City in base Tradesman cargo-van trim or get it as the sampled Wagon SLT, you are looking for the long haul. In that regard, the ProMaster City delivers impressively.
The 178-horepower engine with 174 pound-feet of torque delivers on terrain high and low — smoothly and efficiently, taking the ProMaster City wherever you want it to go on-road. Efficiently? Yes, it gets 21 miles per gallon in the city and 29 on the highway burning regular-grade petrol.
That mileage might not impress someone looking for top fuel economy in a passenger vehicle. But it has high appeal for trades workers in need of a combination of reasonable fuel economy and maximum utility in a small wagon/cargo van that fits unobtrusively in urban parking spaces. The ProMaster City delivers all that and more.
In compact-cargo-van format, it beats everything in its class with a payload capacity (what it can carry onboard) of 1,883 pounds and a towing capacity of 2,000 pounds. That isn’t bad for a four-cylinder engine with decent fuel economy.
March winds blew into the Mid-Atlantic region while I had this one on the road. But the ProMaster City remained remarkably stable — free of wobble, wiggle or annoying tail sway. Credit overall tight body construction, aerodynamic exterior design, electronic stability control, and the use of a bi-link rear coil suspension instead of the bouncy coil springs often used in the rear suspensions of trucks, vans and wagons.
I planned to drive this one as little as possible. But I was so moved by the willingness and efficiency of its TigerShark engine, I drove it everywhere, just for the fun of it. Tradespeople gathered around it at rest stops, including some who were driving competitive Ford Transit Connect models. My advice to Ford: Take the Ram ProMaster City seriously. It is right on target for what urban and suburban tradespeople say they want, and it is aimed directly at you.
If Fiat Chrysler Automobiles decided to really spiff up this one for passenger use — say, add a more attractive interior and offer a diesel model in the US market — the Pro Master City could become a formidable contender in the highly competitive arena for compact crossover-utility vehicles, too.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has a winner here, a potential market-buster. But the evidence, based on current paltry advertising and overall public exposure of this product, indicates that the company’s marketing people don’t realize what they have. That is too bad. It would be sad to see this one go down as an opportunity wasted.WP-Bloomberg
