Bad Boy: The 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten 4x4 High Output Goes Hard
This Ram’s 540-hp twin-turbo six-cylinder engine yields some impressive results.
Pros
- Big-time engine
- Class-appropriate braking and handling
- Interior loaded with features, including Klipsch audio
Cons
- Expensive
- Better have a solid fuel budget, especially if you’re a lead foot
- Can’t fully disable stability control
You might have read our recent First Test report on the 2025 Ram 1500 Laramie Standard Output pickup truck. If you didn’t, the gist is it impressed us a fair amount in a straight line and less so in our braking and handling tests. We also tested a 2025 Ram with the carryover Pentastar V-6; it was, uh, less impressive. We’ve now put a more potent refreshed Ram through our battery of tests, namely the 2025 Ram 1500 Crew Cab Tungsten 4x4 High Output.
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More Juice to Squeeze
As outlined in our Laramie First Test review—and ignoring for our purposes here the Pentastar E-Torque V-6 models, the all-electric Ram REV, and the upcoming plug-in hybrid Ramcharger—the truck brand has binned the Hemi V-8 and replaced it with a choice of two Hurricane 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six engines. Whereas the Laramie we tested employed the “standard output” 420-hp, 469-lb-ft straight-six turbo (SST in Ram parlance), the 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten boasted the “high-output” SST option, which makes peak power and torque figures of 540 hp and 521 lb-ft. Considering the low-output SST truck posted a 0–60-mph time of 5.0 seconds and covered the quarter mile in 13.7 seconds at 98.3 mph, we were intrigued to see what the top-trim Ram 1500 Tungsten with the top engine is capable of. Does it offer plenty of power and acceleration when you need it for towing, hauling, climbing grades, transporting a full crew, merging on the freeway, and more?
The simple answer is yes. Despite weighing 5,960 pounds—a significant 308 pounds more than the well-optioned Ram 1500 Laramie we tested, due to being the top-shelf trim loaded with even more standard equipment—the Ram 1500 Crew Cab Tungsten High Output flew off the line and reached 60 mph in just 4.4 seconds. (The biggest weight-adders are massaging 24-way seats, a sunroof, and the 1,200-watt high-end Klipsch surround-sound audio system.) After bettering its Standard Output sibling in that metric by 0.6 second, it carried on through the quarter mile in 13.0 seconds at 105.0 mph. Looking past the Ram 1500 Laramie’s performance and at the bigger picture, these two results place it eighth on our list of the quickest combustion-powered pickup trucks we’ve ever tested.
By comparison, the 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R is the quickest by virtue of reaching 60 mph in a serious-sports-car-like 3.7 seconds and dispatching the quarter mile in 12.1 seconds at 111.8 mph. But the Ram 1500 Tungsten is the quickest six-cylinder truck we’ve ever tested, followed by the new 2025 Ram Tradesman Crew Cab with the standard-output engine. The latter posted a 4.8-second 0–60 time and 13.5 seconds in the quarter mile at 100.9 mph. The best non-2025 Ram on that list is a twin-turbo V-6-powered 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor SuperCab that reached 60 in 5.2 seconds and dispatched the quarter mile in 13.9 seconds at 97.3 mph. That’s a long way behind the Ram 1500 Tungsten.
Beyond the numbers, there’s an emotional component to the whole experience, as well. As one of our drivers exclaimed, “I was not expecting that much thrill launching this big pickup!” Hold the gas pedal until the turbo spools up and drop the brake at about 3,200 rpm, and the Tungsten just goes. For the record, we achieved the best times with the drivetrain set to both 4Auto and Normal.
Slow Down, Now
As much fun as we had performing straight-line blasts in the 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten High Output, its story converged with the Ram 1500 Laramie when it came to braking (and handling; more on that shortly). Our best stopping distance from 60 mph was 133 feet, improbably identical to the Laramie’s performance despite carrying those several hundred pounds of additional weight. The brake pedal’s travel is medium-long, but the pedal still felt much better and more linear in its response compared to the Laramie’s long-long pedal, especially when driving on the street. The Tungsten also did not pull to one side under heaving braking as its stablemate did. For context, 133 feet is in solid territory for a truck of this size; the Raptor R needed 137 feet to stop, and a 2021 Ram 1500 TRX we tested bested the Tungsten by just 4 feet.
Turn the Wheel
The 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten likewise aped the Laramie’s skidpad and figure-eight results. On the skidpad, it returned a best average lateral acceleration figure of 0.76 g—once again improbably identical to the Laramie’s. It did, however, just shade it on our figure-eight course, posting its quickest lap of 27.5 seconds at an average of 0.64 g versus 27.7 and 0.62. These numbers are in line with others in the segment, but to make the point, know that a 700-hp, 590-lb-ft 2022 Ford F-150 XLT FP700 weighing 1,393 pounds less posted a not-significantly-better 0.80 g average on the skidpad and conquered the figure eight in a slower time of 27.8 seconds at a not-significantly-better 0.69 g.
On the upside, the Tungsten felt better doing all this than the Laramie did. Of the Laramie’s figure-eight performance, we said: “Unfortunately, the long-travel brake pedal was difficult to modulate around our track layout. Just as irritating, the Ram seems to hold onto its ABS intervention even after you release the brake pedal. There’s also a tremendous amount of understeer, and the transmission—after being so pleasant on the street—would not hold a gear.” But the Tungsten? Its medium-travel brake pedal is quite good and easy to modulate, and it’s easy to stay out of the ABS. We also didn’t have issues this time with the transmission’s behavior despite it being the same gearbox as in the Ram Laramie.
As far as technique goes, we ran our best laps with the Ram Tungsten set in Sport mode, traction control switched off, and the drivetrain set to 4WD Auto. The engine certainly feels hugely powerful and linear. Yet with no ability to fully turn off stability control, you can’t really get a real sense for what’s happening with the chassis when coming off a corner. After just a few laps of our track, the tires went away and drastically affected braking and elicited massive midcorner understeer, much like we experienced in the Laramie. For a big, heavy pickup truck, though, the Tungsten performed as expected when considering constraints produced by the stability control.
Final Word
The 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten High Output’s significant power and torque advantages over Rams with the standard-output Hurricane yield the impressive straight-line performance we anticipated. This is a serious truck in terms of power and acceleration; it handles and stops as well as or even better than its “lesser” Ram brethren and other similar pickups sold new today, making it our kind of truck. It commands a steep price, but there’s enough tangible dynamic goodness and a long list of standard features here to make it worth a serious look for anyone shopping for top-line pickup trucks.
I’m not sure if this is bizarre, amusing, interesting, or none of those, but I remember picking up the inaugural issue of Automobile from the magazine rack at a Meijer grocery store in metro Detroit. At 9 years old in 1986, I was already a devoted consumer of car magazines, and this new one with the funky font on the cover caught my eye immediately. Longtime Automobile editor and present-day contributor Michael Jordan despises this story, but I once used his original review of Ferrari’s F40 as source material for a fifth-grade research project. I still have the handwritten report on a shelf at home. Sometimes I text MJ pictures of it — just to brighten his day. I’ve always been a car fan, but I never had any grand dreams, schemes, or plans of making it onto this publication’s masthead. I did earn a journalism degree from Michigan State University but at the time never planned to use it for its intended purpose. Law school made more sense to me for some reason. And then, thankfully, it didn’t. I blame two dates for this: May 1 and May 29, 1994. The former was the day Formula 1 star Ayrton Senna died. As a kid, I’d seen him race years earlier on the streets of Detroit, and though I didn’t follow F1 especially closely, the news of his demise shocked me. It’s the only story I remember following in the ensuing weeks, which just happened to lead right into the latter date. By pure chance, I had earlier accepted a friend’s invitation to accompany him and his father to the Indy 500. You’ve probably heard people say nothing prepares you for the sight of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, especially in real life on race day, with more than 250,000 spectators on the ground. It sounds like clichéd hyperbole, but it’s true. And along with my renewed interest in F1 in the wake of Senna’s death, that first encounter with Indy ignited a passion for motorsports I never expected to find. Without charting the entire course here, the upshot is that it led me to a brief stint working at a racing school, and then to Autoweek, where I worked as a full-time staffer for 13 years, the majority of them as motorsports editor. I was also a tester and reviewer of road cars, a fleet manager, and just about everything in between that is commonplace at automotive enthusiast outlets. Eventually, my work there led me to Automobile in early 2015 — almost 29 years to the day that I first picked up that funky new car mag as my mom checked-off her grocery list. What else do you probably not want to know? I — along with three other people, I’m told frequently — am an avid NBA fan, evidenced by a disturbingly large number of Nikes taking up almost all of my closet space. I enjoy racing/driving video games and simulators, though for me they’ll never replace the real thing. Road cars are cool, race cars are better. I’ve seen the original “Point Break” at least 147 times start to finish. I’ve seen “Top Gun” even more. The millennials on our staff think my favorite decade is the ’80s. They’re wrong. It’s the ’90s. I always have too many books to read and no time to do so. Despite the present histrionics, I do not believe fully autonomous cars will dominate our roads any time soon, probably not for decades. I used to think anyone who didn’t drive a manual transmission wasn’t a real driver, but I was wrong. I wish I could disinvent social media, or at least somehow ensure it is used only for good. And I appreciate being part of Automobile’s proud history, enjoying the ride alongside all of you.
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