For a few hours last week, my copper colored Ram pickup cruised the cheap nfl jerseys china plains of North Texas like some overdressed Duke of Dallas.

Tall, broad and powerful, the Ram Longhorn Edition offered every option a truck loving Texan would want: a Hemi V 8, crew cab, etched leather seats, 20 inch wheels, and eight speed automatic and four wheel drive. last Wednesday, it all disappeared in a thick column of Wholesale NFL Jerseys acrid brown smoke on the side of the Dallas North Tollway $54,335 worth of truck gone in about three minutes.

I was the old hillbilly looking guy who hopped out of the Ram just south of the Trinity Mills exit and limped away from the truck.

If you were one Thomas Davis Panthers Jersey of the two or three motorists who honked at me, offering what looked to be obscene gestures, I will try next time to stage my vehicle fires in a more convenient location.

But I did come away from this with a clearer understanding of fires in modern vehicles, an extremely rare occurrence.

Nonetheless, they happen, and here's what I concluded after Jordan Towing hauled the charred hulk of the once handsome Cheap NFL Jerseys Ram away: Modern cars burn differently from old vehicles.

And it's probably wise to respect that.

More plastic under the hood

Open the hood of your late model car or truck, and you'll see a half acre of plastic actual engine pieces like valve covers, caps and containers for various liquids.

Thirty years ago, most of the pieces under the hood were metal and resistant to fire.

New vehicles are also equipped with high pressure fuel pumps and systems designed to make their fuel injection equipment more efficient. March 20, sailing sublimely along at about 70 mph in the right, northbound lane of the tollway.

It was about 68 and sunny, and the sunroof was open.

Up to that point, the Ram I was test driving had been flawless very serious competition for anything built by Ford or Chevy.

As I approached the Trinity Mills exit, I caught a whiff of gasoline but didn't pay it much mind. My sense of Thomas Davis Jersey smell is extremely poor, and I assumed it came from an old Chevy pickup in front of me.

Within seconds, though, the Ram began to lose power and speed, dropping quickly to 50, 35 and then to 20 mph.

I headed for the exit, figuring I had some sort of bizarre computer problem and just needed to turn the engine off and reboot everything.

About halfway onto the ramp, I ran out of steam, stopped and turned on the emergency flashers still oblivious to any potential danger.

As I unbuckled my seat belt, I noticed a gray Ford Explorer a lane over with a young woman gesturing at me from the passenger seat.

Stephanie Swindell, 24, an oncology nurse from Carrollton, was trying to tell me that the Ram was on fire a fact I discovered as soon as I opened the door and saw flames snaking out of the Cheap Jerseys left front wheel well.

Her fianc, Daniel Fleming, was driving and had realized long before I did that my problems were much more serious than a malfunctioning computer.

"I was in the middle lane probably 100 yards behind you, and I saw cars quickly trying Authentic Thomas Davis Jersey to get around you, like they wanted to get away from you," said Fleming, also 24 and a corporate marketing manager for the Frisco RoughRiders. "I could see flames literally dripping off the truck. They came all the way out the back and seemed to grow and retract, like you were pushing on the gas or something."

When I stepped out of the Ram Wholesale Jerseys admittedly a little dazed Daniel and Stephanie had already stopped ahead of me on the exit ramp and urged me to beat feet.

That was a bit of a challenge. I had foot surgery in mid March and was wearing a heavy, knee high boot. But I had no problem beating feet.