2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT First Drive: Back With More Bite

The 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT slides through a long lefthander flinging a rooster tail of dirt. As the rear tires fall in line behind the fronts, I the mash the gas pedal then bend the truck into a righthand kink with the 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 roaring. The TRX pulls hard to 45 mph and launches off a short, steep berm with the trajectory of an infield pop fly. The nose points to the stars, then the horizon, and then the dirt.

For a fraction of a second, it seems like something has gone wrong, and I’m about to learn what the TRX’s airbags taste like or what color the shock fluid is. Instead, the 6,750-pound truck lands on its front axle with the violence of a teddy bear tossed on a feather pillow. It powers out utterly unfazed, and I gather up my wits to make a quick right before climbing toward a sweeping on-camber left cut into the side of a hill.

After a two-year dirt nap, Ram’s hump-jumpin’ pickup is back and more badass than ever. It is not entirely new or mostly new or even 10 percent new, but driving this oversized, weatherized, road-legal dune buggy in the exact environment it was designed for never gets old. After flogging the TRX around a custom-built dirt track on the grounds of the RedBud MX motorcross circuit, I’ve fallen in love with it all over again.

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The King Is Back

You can draw a direct line between the 2024 ouster of Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and the TRX’s second coming. Under new CEO Antonio Filosa, the conglomerate’s American brands have been empowered to once again build the trucks and SUVs customers actually want, a bold and novel strategy that has Ram serving V-8s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Tim Kuniskis, head of North American brands, popped the 5.7-liter Hemi into the microwave last year to get something out of the kitchen fast, but the really juicy stuff is just coming out of the oven now. The 2027 TRX gets a fat 75-hp boost over the old truck, and next year Ram will stick the 6.4-liter naturally aspirated V-8 into its light-duty truck for the first time ever.

The 2027 TRX only got the green light in December 2025, and production trucks are already being delivered to customers. That’s possible because the engineering work mostly involved revalidating proven hardware for the new truck’s increased power and weight. The reassembled SRT team torture-tested the engine, driveline, and powertrain cooling system in California’s Glamis sand dunes, dialed in high-speed cornering at Wisconsin’s Crandon Raceway, and bombed over whoops in Johnson Valley, home of the infamous King of the Hammers off-road race.

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To produce its immense 777 horsepower, the TRX now flows 13 percent more air through its intake, which the supercharger squeezes to 12 psi rather than 10 psi. Fuel now sprays into the intake ports at 102 psi, up from 73 psi, and the pushrod V-8’s redline has climbed from 6,200 to 6,500 rpm on the strength of valvetrain components adopted from the 797-hp Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye. Those upgrades also lift torque from 650 to 680 lb-ft.

The 10 percent power bump doesn’t feel dramatically different from behind the wheel; it’s not like the old 702-hp version was underpowered. Ram assures us, though, that we’ll be able to measure a difference between old and new TRX at the test track. If the claimed 3.5-second 0–60-mph time holds up, the 2027 model will have a nearly half-second edge over its predecessor and be a tick quicker than the 720-hp Ford F-150 Raptor R. As before, you’ll likely hear a TRX arriving before you see it thanks to the rowdy shout that blares from its 5-inch tailpipes while passengers inside the truck hear something else entirely with the supercharger’s yowling whine drowning out the exhaust note.

Put your foot down out on the road, and the eight-speed automatic tends to let the engine dig from a roll rather than downshifting into a lower gear. Instead, it’s much more responsive, more engaging, and more fun to use the aluminum paddles to call the shifts. There’s a learning curve, though, because each paddle is split in two to straddle the radio controls that live where your fingers naturally fall.

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Softer Around the (Pavement) Edges

Chassis changes are few and relatively minor. The TRX rides on new jounce bumpers and updated adaptive Bilstein dampers cribbed from the 540-hp Ram 1500 RHO with the electronic calibration remapped for the V-8 truck’s extra heft.

In Baja mode, the new truck is every bit as magic as the old one, soaking up whoops and jumps and ruts like the whole world is as forgiving as Play-Doh. Ram’s tailor-made dirt track featured a second jump designed for distance rather than verticality. From a takeoff speed of 65 mph, the TRX took to the skies with an uncanny lightness, covering nearly the same airborne distance as Orville Wright’s first flight and greasing the landing.

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While the old TRX often felt stiff and even brittle over the cracks and divots that pepper Michigan roads, this new one feels pillowy all the time. It rolls, dives, and rears back atop its 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires and 11.8 inches of ground clearance when pushed hard, like a stadium super truck that fits the whole family. It’s hilarious fun made seriously awesome by steering that’s surprisingly responsive and accurate.

The 2027 TRX has also adopted the Atlantis High electronic architecture, which enables more sophisticated driver assistance systems. The TRX takes full advantage of that by including Hands-Free Active Driving Assist as standard equipment. On mapped highways, this extroverted off-roader relaxes into a genuinely comfortable ride, inviting you to sink into the cushy bucket seat and admire the real carbon-fiber trim and suede headliner. Unfortunately, that’ll also give you plenty of time to wonder why this truck runs an infotainment system that looks like it was conceived back when people printed MapQuest directions at home.

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How to Make Sense of a Six-Figure Pickup

Priced from $102,590, the 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT costs about $7,000 more than it did when production ended in 2024 because, well, does anything ever get cheaper these days? Of course there’s more power and more standard equipment on the new truck, but the real reason the TRX should easily command that kind of money is that Ford asks another $10,000 for the F-150 Raptor R. Conveniently, there’s also a new TRX Bloodshot Night Edition to close that gap, a paint-and-stickers launch model that seems like it might have been conceived and named by an AI model tasked with making a special edition for a vape-sucking, energy-drink-swilling customer that it hallucinated.

The other justification for a six-figure pickup truck is that, aside from the Ford, there isn’t another truck or SUV that delivers this kind of experience. Slide it, jump it, send it, and the Ram 1500 TRX SRT just makes sense.