After months of teasers, rumors and spy shots, it’s finally official: You can soon get a Hellcat-powered pickup truck in the form of the 2021 Ram TRX. Rocking the same 6.2-liter, supercharged Hemi V8 found in the Challenger, Charger and Durango Hellcats as well as the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk, the Ram TRX is good for 702 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque. It’ll hit 60 mph in 4.5 seconds, 100 mph in 10.5, and cover the quarter-mile in 12.9 seconds at 108 mph.
While “Hellcat-powered pickup truck” likely already carries enough significance on its own, the Ram TRX also turns out to be a landmark vehicle for the history of the pickup as a whole: it’s the first and only factory-supercharged pickup truck since the Ford F-150 SVT Lightning went away back in 2004. Yep, believe it or not, no OEM has produced a pickup with a supercharger in the past 16 years. No wonder the world has gone down the crapper.
And before any Ford stans are tempted to point out that the Harley-Davidson and Foose editions of the 11th-gen F-150 were supercharged, those two were low-volume special editions that had their supercharging done by a third party, so they don’t really count.
For any younger people unfamiliar with the Ford F-150 SVT Lightning, it was powered by a 380-hp, 5.4-liter supercharged V8 and appeared in the first Fast & Furious movie as Paul Walker’s daily driver, being seen hauling overnight parts from Japan from Harry’s to Dom’s garage.
As if the now-FCA-sponsored franchise needed another reason to feature the new Ram TRX and its presumably badass supercharger whine in the next movie.
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