2021 Ram TRX: The Hellcat-Powered, High-Jumping Pickup With 702 Horsepower (2024)

Update 8/20/20: Ram Truck confirms that the entire 702-unit run of the 2021 Ram 1500 TRX Launch Edition pickup sold out in approximately three hours after the order books opened on Tuesday, August 18. Priced at $92,010, including a $1695 destination fee, the TRX Launch Edition holds the dubious honor of being the most expensive half-ton production pickup available at the time of sale. The “standard” TRX wears a base MSRP of $71,690 including the $1696 destination fee. That’s more than $13k more than the base MSRP of Ford Raptor crew cab, but who’s counting?

Limited to 702 examples in a nod to its supercharged 702-horsepower V8 engine, the Launch Edition features exclusive Anvil Gray paint, a commemorative TRX badge on the center console and beadlock-capable wheels. Standard Launch Edition kit includes the otherwise optional TRX Level 2 Equipment Group that bundles a dual-pane panoramic sunroof, carbon-fiber interior trim, a head-up display, color accent package, a 19-speaker Harman Kardon premium sound system and bodyside graphics.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles added its supercharged Hellcat engine to its Ram 1500 lineup in the form of the Ram 1500 TRX, and it over-delivers with more than 700 horsepower.

In the four years since the concept reveal, FCA has used the engine to inject power (and interest) into the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, the Redeye variants of Dodge‘s Charger and Challenger Hellcats, the Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat and the limited run, barely legal Dodge Challenger Demon. Now it’s Ram’s turn to feed 702 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque into the 1500 Rebel, a light-duty pickup already suited for off-road duty, in an attempt to bury the Ford Raptor in the sand.

The market for full-size pickup trucks built to race over dunes at 100 mph is admittedly slim compared with the millions of pickups meant to be used as work trucks. But the Ram TRX, lifted 12 inches off the ground and riding on 35-inch tall tires, is a regular pickup. It just has the added benefit of also being a Baja 1000 racer, dragster and sports car. No doubt its starting price is $71,690 MSRP ($69,995 plus $1495 destination) could grow to $100,000 when fully loaded.

Consider the mechanical dilemmas and engineering quandaries facing the TRX team. The go-fast parts—the giant V8, eight-speed automatic transmission and transfer case—were already proven and available for years in the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. The challenge is making a much bigger vehicle that tows up to 8,100 pounds and weighs nearly that much to feel agile, responsive and capable of both launching into the air and touching down like a ballerina.

The launch and landing is managed by a feature Ram calls Jump Detection, which senses the truck’s ride height and wheel speed to determine when the driver has gone airborne. The TRX can calculate how to land gracefully by adjusting the dampers, torque, engine speed and other parameters no matter how far the driver pins the throttle pedal. Most other vehicles use this kind of stability control—on the ground.

Catching massive air and landing with confidence in a factory-stock pickup with a full warranty is an experience that didn’t exist until the first Ford F-150 Raptor. Since Ram is about a decade late to the party, engineers overcompensated in every way possible. The rear wheels can travel up to 13 inches thanks to Bilstein shocks with remote reservoirs, ensuring a cushy return to the earth and no semblance of smaller rocks, potholes or debris that would wreck an average car.

The TRX is eight inches wider and two inches higher than a regular Ram 1500. It has 5-inch-wide dual exhaust pipes and the 15-inch front and rear brake rotors. On the same day, it could swim through more than two-and-a-half feet of water, accelerate on land to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds, approach an incline at 30 degrees, haul 1,310 pounds in the bed, tow an 8,100 pound trailer and carry four people in its large, leather-stitched cabin.

Everything is reinforced for such abuse, including the frame and a locking Dana 60 solid axle. The air intakes let the engine breathe cleanly through a sand storm with more than 13 square feet of filtration. However, because the Hellcat V8 is so particular, the standard Ram’s low-range four-wheel drive is incompatible. Instead, the TRX offers drive modes for mud, sand, rock crawling, Baja racing and launch control that require the driver to do nothing but tap a button and press the gas.

Thick aluminum paddle shifters attach to the flat-bottom steering wheel, while a console-mounted shifter replaces the rotary-dial selector. Those features, plus an optional head-up display, have never before appeared in a Ram truck.

A 12-inch vertical touchscreen with UConnect 4 is just as fast and easy to use as in other models, with the addition of TRX-specific drive modes and performance data available via the display. A new 7-inch display in the instrument panel shows more TRX data.

The Ram 1500’s interior is the highest quality among full-size competitors with the top Laramie Longhorn and Limited trims rivaling the best luxury cars in fit, finish and detail. The TRX is no different. Leather covers the entire dash, console and doors, and complements the red inserts, stitching, and carbon-fiber trim. It’s as lovely a place to be as many supercars like the Audi R8.

The Ram TRX won’t be hard to miss given its menacing front end, oversized hood scoop, exposed tow hooks and the sheer girth. It will be available later this year so long as the world doesn’t end. And if it does, this will be the vehicle to have.