Bought a truck yesterday. 2013 Dodge Ram 1500 with the 5.7 Hemi. It won't get much hard work. Lot of highway miles, pull a two or four horse trailer very rarely, and take me fishing. I've been beating up my '06 PT Cruiser for it's whole life. I don't know how many deer and antelope my friends and I have stuffed into the back end of it. Or how many rocky roads it has crawled to get me closer to where the fish are! I think this will work for a long time. It's even an automatic. The Cruiser is a 5 speed, but you can't get a manual in the 1/2 tons anymore.
I've heard pros and cons on the Hemi. Even my brother and sister, both engineers, don't agree. Hope I did okay by going with one. The only experience I have with one in the past was when Dodge started putting them in maybe six or eight years ago (?) and a friend insisted I run his when traveling to my oldest daughters because he thought my station wagon was near death. For a couple years he thought that. lol So the Cruiser gets relegated to the task of go-cart. I'm shooting for 300,000 in it, and after replacing the motherboard yesterday, I'm counting on it to last. We're half way there!