This may be a dumb question but if you were to line up 2009-2011 Ram 1500s what characteristic would you uses to determine the different model years?

 

The colours.

 

badges on the sides

 

The VIN

 

so the short answer is if you are driving up on a 4th gen you will not be able to identify the model year?

 

Well, colors and badging are visible identifiers. I don't know specifics but the others who posted about them probably know the model year differences that they were referring to.

Rob

 

Headrest are bigger on the 11's

 

On the sport models 09 and 10 have chrome around grill....my 11 does not.

 

Actually not all 10 sports have the all chrome grill. For that matter not all the 09s do either, Canada was painted cross hairs with the chrome honeycomb.

Easiest, door badging. RAM on 09-10 and RAM 1500 on 11.

From there it is no concrete way to tell a 09 from a 10. If it says RAM on the side and does not say DODGE on the gate badge that is a 10 for sure, all 09s will say DODGE on the gate badge, but so do early 10s, so that is not a sure fire way.

So the true answer is you can not tell, by a quick look, a 09 from a 10. Easy to pic out the 11s.

We are about a year or two away before they make slight changes. If you based it on the 3rd Gen. 02-05 were the same, the 06s got a face lift.

 

11's the 1500 was spaced out on the doors, bigger headrests,

10's middle headrest is smaller
09's headrests are all the same basically.