Ram had a tough 2024. As it plots a comeback, the company will reportedly consider bringing back its most famous engine.
Last year was hard on America’s third-best-selling truck brand. The Ram 1500, the brand’s flagship truck, lost its place among America’s top three best-selling vehicles. Parent company Stellantis hit serious financial troubles. Its CEO left in a conflict with its board of directors. Stellantis enters 2025 officially leaderless.
No Hemi in the New 2025 Ram 1500
The famed truck brand introduced an all-new Ram 1500 for the 2025 model year. With a new luxurious Tungsten trim level and a unique Ramcharger power option that gives buyers an electric vehicle with a gasoline-powered range extender, it’s a promising truck.
But it lacks a few things many longtime fans consider key to the Ram identity. There’s no high-performance TRX version. Maybe more importantly, there’s no Hemi V8. You can buy a 2025 Ram 1500 with the classic Pentastar V6 or either of two turbocharged inline-6-cylinder engines, one of which puts out 540 horsepower. But there is no Hemi option.
That could change. A pair of new reports say Ram is open to bringing back its most famous engine.
CEO Returns, Could Bring Back V8
The Hemi wouldn’t be the only thing returning to Ram. CEO Tim Kuniskis retired from the company last year but recently returned to resume his old position. He tells Road & Track the engine could make a comeback. But it won’t happen fast.
“Honestly, the bigger issue is not Hemi vs. T6,” Kuniskis said. “The bigger issue is we took away a fundamental American thing. Americans love freedom of choice more than anything.”
Kuniskis isn’t sure that the lack of a Hemi is driving disappointing Ram 1500 sales. It took time to get the factory up and running with the new design, he says, and the company rushed out the simplest trim levels first. The luxurious trims that drive high profits are coming later.
“I don’t actually have any of these trucks in the trims I’m supposed to have on the market,” he explains, limiting early sales. He needs to know how well the truck will sell once dealers have a full supply of trim levels, he says, before concluding that the Hemi needs to come back.
Engineers Would Need to Adapt the Truck
Adding the Hemi to the 2025 Ram pickup would also take some engineering work, Kuniskis told Motor1. “The Hemi was never designed to run in that truck on that electrical architecture, so that’s a huge challenge.” Ram would also need to launch new contracts with suppliers for old parts.
But suppliers don’t turn down those contracts. “I didn’t say you can’t do it,” Kuniskis clarified. “You can’t do it right away.”
Could Come Down to Government Policy
The federal government could be the deciding factor.
Automakers have replaced many larger engines with smaller, turbocharged models in recent years. They’ve done that, in part, to comply with tough new emissions standards worldwide. In America, Europe, and parts of Asia, automakers face ever-stricter regulations on fuel economy and tailpipe emissions.
President-elect Donald Trump suggested that he would undo some of the outgoing Biden administration’s policies, rolling back tough standards on tailpipe emissions and fuel economy to pre-2020 levels.
That might not make big V8s practical in every market segment. In most market segments, automakers sell the same vehicles in many countries and won’t modify them if just one country loosens rules.
Full-size trucks, however, are almost unique to the American market. They barely sell overseas, where pickups are less common, and those that do sell in large numbers tend to be smaller. So, a change to regulations could enable Ram to bring the Hemi back to the 1500.
