Ram battles Ford Raptor with 702-hp TRX pickup

Ram's off-road prowess has merged with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' street racing chops.

The result is the 2021 Ram 1500 TRX, a 702-hp pickup that'll zip from 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds, a new standard for truck performance. The bulky powerhouse is loaded with a premium interior and technology. It comes with the supercharged, 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 that powers Dodge's Hellcat line.

After Ford took a shot at Jeep with the Bronco in July, Ram responded by leapfrogging the high-performance F-150 Raptor last week. The TRX, which tops out at 118 mph, is slated to go into production early in the fourth quarter and is expected to arrive in dealerships by the end of the year.

The TRX — a play on "T. rex" — will mark the arrival of the newest predator in the pickup world. Ram's North America head, Mike Koval Jr., said the battle will hark back to the prehistoric era by declaring that the TRX "destroys" Raptors.

Now it appears the truck sector won't have to wait long to see Ford bite back with the F-150 Raptor, a bruising pickup in its own right that achieves 450 hp in its current form. Ford's pickup was spotted recently during testing with the supercharged 5.2-liter V-8 engine that powers the Mustang Shelby GT500. It reportedly gets 725 to 750 hp, according to spy photography company Spiedbilde.

A Ford source told Spiedbilde: "Honestly, we had to counter Ram once we knew they installed the Hellcat in the TRX."

Analyst Karl Brauer wasn't surprised to see that Ford already has a response in the cards.

"You can't keep a secret in this industry, and I think there's been rumors for a while that Ram was going to unleash something along the lines of a Raptor," Brauer told Automotive News. "I think Ford, wisely, started prepping for such a contingency with their own Raptor efforts and studying the options to crank things up a bit in the Raptor if and when necessary."

Building a wildly quick pickup is nothing new for Chrysler.

The performance rush in the pickup segment reminds Brauer of the 1970s, when the muscle car era neared its end because of emissions rules, but trucks had lighter requirements. He said trucks "could continue to be more performance-oriented well into the mid-'70s, when the cars were not allowed to."

He pointed to Dodge, which delivered the Lil' Red Express truck during that period.

"It was quicker than the Corvette at the time, and it was quicker than the Pontiac Firebird," Brauer said. "It was a 360-cubic-inch V-8 engine with a four-barrel carburetor, but you couldn't put it in, with that kind of horsepower and emissions, a car at that point. [But] you could put it in a truck."

In the early 2000s, Chrysler pushed the envelope again with the Dodge Ram SRT-10, a pickup outfitted with a Viper engine that debuted for the 2004 model year. The automaker called the SRT-10 the "Viper of pickup trucks" and earned a Guinness World Records entry for "world's fastest production pickup truck."

Koval said the Ram SRT-10, with its 500-hp Viper-sourced V-10 engine that delivered 154 mph, was "absolute batshit crazy."

"So you can see," Koval said, "we're no strangers to extreme performance trucks."

Koval said FCA has taken everything its truck brand has learned about performance and off-road capability and married that to the knowledge that its SRT crew has gathered through the years about "going fast and breaking records."

Koval said TRX buyers will be people who value fun, adventure and off-road excursions. The model will help the brand compete in a diverse pickup space in which the vehicles have numerous roles, including work, family haulers, luxury cruisers and enthusiast trucks, with the TRX falling into that final category.

FCA reengineered and fortified the frame for the TRX, which is 75 percent different from the 1500.

The TRX, FCA said, is "8 inches wider when compared to the rest of the Ram 1500 lineup."

The speedy hauler has a ground clearance of 11.8 inches, FCA said, "due in part to a 2-inch ride height increase when compared with the rest of the 1500 lineup, along with 35-inch tires." FCA said the combination enables the pickup to clear surface obstacles easily and at high speeds.

The TRX has five drive modes: Auto, Sport, Tow, Snow and Custom.

There is no rotary shifter, as FCA opted for a console-mounted automatic shifter, which is "really core at the heart of performance for this truck," said Ryan Nagode, who heads the Ram interior studios and interior systems.

Koval expects the average TRX customer to be 50 years old, possibly already owning a high-performance vehicle. This owner would lean toward the TRX in most cases when it's time to head out because of the pickup's utility.

Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions, doesn't see the TRX doing major volume. It'll be used to draw people into dealerships and bring attention to Ram's other trucks.

Fiorani says the TRX likely won't be produced for long. He believes FCA will keep it rare.

"This is about creating a product that's a halo for the Ram brand," Nagode said. "It's built upon our award-winning Ram 1500 lineup, which I think brings confidence to what we've applied."