It’s funny how conservative car and truck manufacturers can be sometimes. Chrysler’s top executives (which were met with much resistance by engineers) capped the first year of the Dodge diesel pickup at a 13,000-unit build limit. Well, the corporate bigwigs were wrong. By January of 1989 (Dodge began taking orders in June of ’88) 22,000 orders had been placed by dealerships—which exceeded production capacity.
Needless to say, some changes were quickly made in order to meet such a huge demand for a turbodiesel pickup. Cummins tooled up a new plant (solely for the Dodge engine program) in Walesboro, Indiana called Cummins MidRange Engine Plant, or CMEP. In April of 2003, this plant celebrated its 1-millionth production engine.
One of the things I like about Dodges is the fact that when you roll up next to a second or third-generation 1-ton at a stoplight, there’s a very good chance it’s Cummins-powered. I don't believe that ratio is quite as high for Chevy’s or GMC’s (6.0L and even 8.1L Vortec gas), or even Fords (5.4L or V-10 Triton gas, ick!).