You know the old saying, “Muscle weighs more than fat”? You will be hearing it even more in the coming months thanks to Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis and the rest of his adrenaline-chasing team, which is trying to shake off a few turbulent years with the reveal of three new V8 street trucks under an old-school name. Meet the 2027 Ram Rumble Bee.
Ram’s reborn performance pickup will in three flavors: the base model with a 5.7-liter Hemi V8 making 395 horsepower, the Rumble Bee 392 with the company’s sweet 6.4-liter naturally aspirated V8 making 470 hp, and of course, the Ram SRT Rumble Bee with a supercharged 6.2-liter Hellcat V8 churning out 777 hp. And critically for its street truck cred, all come in the previously-unavailable combo of the smaller Quad Cab and short bed to create a wheelbase that’s more than a foot shorter than normal.
Kuniskis knows this idea isn’t new. In fact, he was the first one to acknowledge that not only has this been done before, but it didn’t really work the last time, and there are myriad reasons for that. For starters, the last time was roughly 20 years ago, back in the days of the F-150 Lightning, the previous Ram Rumble Bee, Chevy’s Silverado SS, and the biggest of half-ton Kahunas, the Viper-engined Ram SRT-10.
Pop Quiz: When was the last time Mopar put an aluminum engine in an SRT-badged truck? Admittedly, this construction works better when I don’t give you the answer first. All apologies to Mr. Kuniskis, but as cool as a Hemi-powered street truck might be, it’ll never be Viper-powered Ram cool. That’s a hill I’ll gladly die on.
Before you go looking at RAM SRT-10 prices, let me remind you why Kuniskis considers it a failure: While it was undeniably awesome, the 505-horsepower, V10-powered pickup kind of dropped the ball when it came to truck stuff. The enthusiast-spec, short-cab variant with the stick-shift never got a decent tow rating; meanwhile, the automatic quad cab could manage a respectable (especially for 20 years ago) 7,500 pounds.
This time around, Ram says there’s none of that hunt-and-peck nonsense. There’s only one gearbox, the eight-speed automatic. All you have to do is choose your engine. Wanna tow your 8,500-pound trailer rig to the lake, drop the boat in, then head over to bracket night at the local strip and lay down a blistering quarter mile without so much as a tire change? Then you, my friend, might just be in the market for a muscle truck.
So, just what is a muscle truck? Since Ram had this space to itself, its product team is sort of making this up as it goes along, but a basic formula has emerged: Take a standard half-ton, hack 13 inches off the overall length, add a V8, and shake well. Which V8, you ask? Freakin’ all of ’em, boss!
The 5.7
The base Rumble Bee is equipped with Ram’s now-classic, 5.7-liter Hemi V8. You get 395 horsepower and 410 pound-feet of torque. Four-wheel drive is standard, but you get only a single-speed transfer case (no low range) and a final drive ratio of 3.92:1. No matter which Rumble Bee you pick, it comes with an instant RWD mode to enable big, smoky burnouts. They’re also fitted with launch control, should you actually want to use those tires for their intended purpose.
Both the 5.7 and 392 models get a standard steel suspension, but it’s unique from the base 1500’s thanks to the shortened frame. Only the SRT model comes with full air suspension as standard equipment, but it is optional on the mid-range 392.
The 392
Yep, we’re getting the 6.4 in the light-duty chassis—a shortened light-duty chassis at that. Don’t get too excited; these trucks still weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 pounds. You get a healthy 470 horsepower and 455 lb-ft of torque from the chunky V8, and it gets the same 3.92:1 rear end as the 5.7.
At first glance, the 392 looks like a mere engine upgrade, but this is also the first trim that unlocks the Rumble Bee’s Track Pack option.
What does a “track pack” get you in a pickup, exactly? Air springs, for starters. The adjustable suspension can drop the truck even lower for improved handling and softens up the ride when you’re not getting on it. The track pack also adds two more drive modes to the SRT’s repertoire—”track” (shocker) and a power-limiting “valet” mode. Between the tire and suspension upgrades, track pack models can muster 0.89 g of lateral grip. The best Car & Driver eked out of the old TRX was 0.7g.
There are other goodies, too. Ram describes the track pack’s 16.1-inch front discs as “sombrero-sized.”
The SRT
Yep, that’s a Hellcat—all 777 horsepower of it. And a TRX this is not. Ram’s big off-road monster gives up a lot of on-road potential in exchange for its competence on the rough stuff. The Rumble Bee needn’t concern itself with such frivolity. Where the TRX offers all-terrain tires with more protection than a flack jacket, the Rumble Bee is rocking street performance rubber—and the widest rear tires fitted to anything in the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram portfolio since the Viper was discontinued.
If you’re a Mopar fan, the numbers will likely be familiar to you. The 6.2-liter, supercharged V8 makes 680 lb-ft of torque to go with its monster power rating. We noted above that the track pack is optional on the 392; it’s standard on the SRT. And while “loud” may have to win out over “fast” in a world of Rivians and Hummer EVs, the SRT is by no means slow. It’ll clear the quarter-mile in 11.6 seconds, Ram says. That’s a second quicker than the Escalade-V, and barely half a second slower than C/D’s quickest pass in the last-gen GT500. That’s flying.
The Hellcat-powered Rumble Bee tops off a lineup that not only exclusively features V8 engines, but they’re all equipped for speed—hot, nasty, badass speed. Since these are shipping with proper performance tires, they have properly uncapped v-maxes; Ram says it wants the SRT to hit 170 mph flat-out.
But despite the lofty outputs, aggressive stances, and shortened bodies, these are still pickup trucks first and foremost. My towing example above wasn’t cherry-picked; Ram fully expects owners to use these things as utility vehicles. At 88-90 inches wide, they’re barely narrow enough to fit inside what used to be a standard-width 96-inch garage door. If they’re going to take up that much space, they sure ought to offer at least some practicality, right?
Sure, you get the short bed with the quad cab, and while they’re not intended to hit the trails, all three Rumble Bees get standard four-wheel drive; you’re just not getting a two-speed transfer case. Slap on snow tires, and you’ll be a stoplight menace 365 days a year.
And that brings us to a potential sticking point: the cab. Kuniskis expects to hear some consternation from the single-cab purists, but he says the market has moved on. Despite vocal enthusiast outcry for a single-bench option, at the end of the day, 97% of truck buyers opt for family cabs.
“They’re posting, but they’re not buying,” Kuniskis said.
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