Following the departure of much-loathed Stellantis head Carlos Tavares late last year, Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis told Motor1 that he wouldn’t rule out a return of the beloved Hemi V-8 to the Ram 1500 pickup. Now, Ram is teasing a big reveal on June 8th. Could we see the return of the V-8?
An Instagram post featuring Kuniskis, Diesel Brothers host Dave Sparks, and an actor dressed as a fighter pilot is cryptic, but the caption says “[f]ire up the engines—big things are on the horizon.” In the comments, Sparks also said, “Ram is in very good hands with Tim.”
What does all this mean? We don’t know, but the date— the 8th—in combination with Kuniskis’ earlier comments has us wondering, perhaps hoping, that Ram will announce a return for the V-8 next month. Better still would be a revival of the Hellcat-powered Ram TRX, which was first rumored earlier this year.
Ram last year dropped the 5.7-liter V-8 from its half-ton in favor of a twin-turbo straight-six, a move that Tavares apparently pushed for against the objections from other Stellantis execs. The brand also replaced the TRX with the RHO, which gets much of the same, dune-bashing running gear with a 540-horsepower version of the Stellantis straight-six.
When we spoke with Kuniskis earlier this year, he said putting a Hemi back into the Ram 1500 wouldn’t be the work of a moment. “Number one, the Hemi was never designed to run in that truck on that electrical architecture, so that’s a huge challenge,” he said. “They shut down production on that particular Hemi, the eTorque. There’s supplier work because when you shut something down, suppliers shut down their assembly lines, and they switch to something else.”
He didn’t say it was impossible, just that doing this would take time.
Of course, Ram could have something else up its sleeve entirely, and it’s just a coincidence that the reveal is set for June 8th… a Sunday. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long to find out.