If some want upgrades to the pistons, why stop there. Get some better rods, crank, heads, valves etc. Whoops, soon you will have a fully built engine that cost almost 2/5th's of the trucks original MSRP. Oh wait, you need to upgrade the tranny too to handle the potential power a customer might put in. Add another 4k for a built tranny. Then add a better rear end. Might as well add better suspension. So now you have a what.....$80,000 sport truck. That's a guess, i have no idea what all that stuff cost for a company to put in their production line.
See where im going. You can always make a vehicle better. Theres the added cost. If Dodge made their engines able to hold up in stock form then that is all they needed to do. IMO it's up to the customers to modify to their liking.
So if we take a $80,000ish srt-10, $33,715 Lightning(MSRP on my window sticker) and a $40,000 Silverado SS(MSRP found on google). That is a huge gap. I personally do not think the general public would pay twice as much for a pickup when they can get another "sport" truck for cheaper. I'm not sure of the MSRP in 2004 on a srt10 RC. A quick google search says the 2004 MSRP for the 04 srtram was $45,795 MSRP. That makes more sense to me than something that cost thousands more. Lets not get into why the Lightning and SS sucks. I am trying to say that there's the sport truck market that Dodge was competing in. They had to play it smart.
Granted, some Dodge fans will pay considerably more to get a nice luxury truck with one hell of an engine and drive train(upgrades things like in my first "paragraph"). On the same note, you will have people like me who can not afford such a thing and has to look else where. When i was shopping for a fast truck, there was 3 trucks on my mind. The srt10 RC, Lightning and the Silverado SS. I will not(unless asked) go into what made me choose but price did come into the picture. I did buy mine 2nd hand though.
