It takes me forever to find a newer vehicle. Every one I have owned I have been plagued by paranoia about there being a fatal flaw with the motor. When I bought my 3rd gen I scoured the internet for posts about the valve springs breaking on the early hemis and dropping the valve into the cylinder which mine has never done for the 5 years I have owned it. I'm just trying to get a feel for the risk or which particular years seemed to have a higher failure rate. It seems like 2011 was the worst year for some reason. I used to work in a repair shop so I am pretty mechanically inclined and can find problems on used vehicles, I'm just worried about something developing after I put 20k miles on it.
I have come to realize, ( very paranoid as are you ) that the more research you do the more "bugs" you will find. I once researched manual tranny oil on the Subaru Forester forum for so long until i decided whatever is in my 100,000 mile tranny now, will just be fine forever.
Few topics i tend to avoid: oil filter, mpg, trans oil, mds. Now i say that with a little humor, i do of course look into those sometimes, but what i mean is you will run yourself into the ground to make a decision sometimes. So much back and forth, thats BS, no way i will get that mileage, used that super duper top teir oil, my motor blew up the next day, kind of talk.
In the end, make the best decision you can with some research and in the end it boils down to the odds of it happening to you. All vehicle manufacturers have turds, some more than others. One big one with engine oil i don't go by is the Oil change monitor, i like to change between 5 and 7K miles, Not saying there isnt oils that can't go that long, i just accept the money it costs to do it earlier. Why go up right to the line of when the oil loses its protection, just cut it a little sooner and i don't have to worry as much.
Like others have said, i see more easily as many rams in my town now than anything else. Which is a lot more than i used to, there climbing the ladder in popularity for a reason, if there were that many failures, you would probably hear a lot more about it than you do.
Thing about it is, by the time we realize how amazing some vehicles are, ( how long they last almost problem free) its too late, they all have a ton of miles on them.
If we knew how good the mid 80s Toyota 4x4 were most of us would have bought one of those,like them or not i would have. Or many years of the Chevys 90s to the 20010 or so, almost indestructible.
So, i've trained myself, not to stress so much, do the research you can, talk to others on here and i'm sure you will make a decision your eventually happy with.
PS, the Ram was the first vehicle i've ever bought purely on impulse, I did, NO research on it.
