Dodge Dakota Revival Due in 2027, Ram's Future Mid-Size Truck Will Be Made in Illinois

In June 2018, one month before Sergio passed away, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles presented a five-year business plan for the period between 2018 and 2022. The FCA Capital Markets Day is where the Italo-American manufacturer confirmed a brand-new midsizer that would be sold under the Ram instead of the Dodge brand, namely a successor for the Dakota. What is especially hilarious about this announcement is that none other than Marchionne decided against a replacement a few years earlier, citing the slowing demand for mid-size pickups in North America.

We're already well into 2023, going on 2024, yet the Ram Dakota is nowhere to be seen. Funnily enough, FCA US LLC already has a midsizer on sale in the form of the Jeep Gladiator. Adding insult to injury, the Gladiator uses Ram 1500-inspired rear suspension. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, now known as Stellantis after the merger with the French peeps at Groupe PSA, could have easily used the Gladiator as the basis for the fourth-gen Dakota.

For some reason or another, that didn't happen. A missed opportunity? Given the relatively high price of the Gladiator and incredibly poor sales performance of Jeep's truck in the first three quarters of 2023, a more affordable and more mass-market sibling from sister brand Ram would have made sense. A whopping five years after FCA confirmed the Dakota's revival at the Balocco Proving Ground in Italy during Capital Markets Day, the Auburn Hills-based automaker has once again promised to launch a mid-size workhorse via a deal inked with the UAW.

The PDF below reads that $1.5 billion will be invested through April 2028 into the Belvidere assembly plant, which hasn't been producing anything since February 2023. The last product made at the Illinois-based facility was the Cherokee, a compact SUV that overlapped with the slightly smaller Jeep Compass.

Those $1.5 billion will prepare said assembly plant for the long-delayed return of the Dakota, which is due to start rolling off the line in 2027. What's more, said portable document file mentions the plural of the word truck. Although it remains to be seen what other mid-size pickups are in the offing, we do know that FCA US LLC expects to sell 80,000 to 100,000 units on a yearly basis.

Let's glance over the delivery numbers for the segment's best-selling models to understand how realistic that is. Between January 2023 and September 2023, the largest automaker of the Big Three in Detroit moved no fewer than 78,036 examples of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. The segment's leader, however, is Toyota with the freshly redesigned Tacoma (179,681 deliveries).

There's no denying that Ram could sell 100,000 units of its future midsizer, make no mistake about that! As to which platform it would use, chances are STLA Frame. Underpinning the all-electric Ram 1500 REV, said platform is also compatible with internal combustion engines. Think 3.0-liter Hurricane inline-six, a twin-turbo mill that's coming to the Ram 1500 for model year 2025.

The cited portable document file also reads that Jeep Gladiator production will continue into 2028 in Toledo, with FCA US LLC promising to launch a plug-in hybrid option in addition to the standard 3.6-liter Pentastar V6. There is no information available on the Gladiator's future, though, but one could imagine the next-generation truck being twinned with – obviously – Ram's future midsizer.