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Ram’s new V8-powered Rumble Bee lineup revives a classic street truck formula that didn’t quite work the first time, company CEO Tim Kuniskis told us. Largely, they failed because despite being good at the “street” part, they tended to lack in the “truck” department. Kuniskis and his Monster-Energy-fueled band of engineers and product planners likely had little else in mind when they placed their bets on a new lineup of Muscle Trucks—all of them quad cabs.
That’s not to suggest Ram’s engineering team just stuck some performance parts on the existing 1500 pickup and called it a day; far from it. The Rumble Bee is a distinct model—13 inches shorter and somehow even wider than the base half-ton. Think of it more like a Charger ‘ute with a truck nose on the front than a classic pickup truck and you’re halfway home.
The proportions will be familiar to anybody who follows the evolution of performance trucks; they won’t be so to those who remember the last time street trucks were popular. Even Ram’s own SRT-10 came in a single-cab variant (with a stick, no less). Appropriately, that’s also a classic example of a street truck failing at truck stuff; the manual Viper-powered-Ram wasn’t rated to tow at all. It didn’t even leave the factory with a hitch receiver. The quad-cab automatic, meanwhile, could tow 7,500 pounds.
Ram could have taken this re-engineering even further, Kuniskis told us, and carved another 300 pounds out of the Rumble Bee by offering it in a single-cab configuration. That may sound game-changing to a sports car enthusiast, but remember, Ram brags that these trucks offer similar acceleration despite weighing 6,000 pounds. Size is almost (and perhaps not just almost) a point of pride. 300 pounds behind the driver of a pickup this big is nothing—a change of about 2.5%. And it puts the center of mass closer to the rear axle, which helps with traction.
A 2027 Ram Rumble Bee with the cab digitally (and hastily) shortened. -Byron Hurd
But that’s not why Kuniskis and his team stuck with the crew cab. The simple fact of the matter is that the past 20 years haven’t been kind to single-cab trucks. According to Kuniskis, buyers who would consider a single-cab truck now represent a tiny sliver of the market—fewer than 5% of shoppers (and even fewer actually end up buying them). Sure, it’s a big market, but when you’re throwing your money behind the notion that American performance buyers are ready to embrace the pickup truck as the future of muscle cars, the smart bet is on what sells. And right now, that’s family-sized pickups.
The enthusiast counter-argument is simple: It’s impossible to choose what isn’t there. Whether you look at midsize or fullsize trucks, it’s tough to find enthusiast-friendly configurations without resorting to the aftermarket, where you can find single-cab Jeep Gladiators with contractor beds and 1,000-horsepower Silverados with manual gearboxes. But good luck finding the simpler versions of those at a dealership; most half-tons you find in showrooms have names longer than Spanish royalty and correspondingly profit-stuffed sticker prices. Then there’s Slate…
It remains to be seen whether Ram’s Muscle Truck move will pay off, but one thing’s for sure: the Rumble Bee isn’t responsible for the death of single-cab trucks. That ship sailed years ago.
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Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
