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Ford F-150 Lobo who? Chevy what? Ram just brought the noise and with the Father of the Hellcat in the driver’s seat threw down with claws out.
On Wednesday, the Ram Rumble Bee roared back to life, but it’s not one truck, or two trucks, or three trucks. It’s a family of four trucks, all powered by Hemi V8s, and the range topper? A Hellcat-powered street truck that absolutely checks all the boxes for what a street truck should be in the year 2026.
Sorry fam, no one buys single-cab trucks. Sales data prove the online hand wringing to be just that.
Ford F-150 Lobo Ford
The new Ram Rumble Bee SRT absolutely embarrasses the Ford F-150 Lobo with its half-hearted attempt to be a street truck. A 2-inch lowering kit in the rear, tweaked body work, and more cooling along with a trick differential simply doesn’t chop. Can you say wheel gap?
Ford even admitted defeat nine months after introducing the F-150 Lobo by offering a supercharger kit for the setup after the fact. But a supercharger taking output to 700 horsepower doesn’t make the Lobo a turn-key package. It just fixes the power shortcoming.
Roush Nightmare Roush
In April, Roush finished the Ford tried to start with the Lobo with a two-door F-150 dubbed the Nightmare. But it’s a third-party makeover and not a factory-backed street truck.
All of this is ironic given Ford had the first- and second-gen Lightnings, which were proper street trucks. Lowered, and the second-gen model was supercharged.
Chevy and GMC? Not even in the fight. MIA. Which is sad because at one point there was a Silverado SS with the 454, and later in the 2000s the more modern Silverado SS.
Ram, oh does the automaker know what it’s doing when it comes to street trucks. It’s the brand that gave the world a Viper V10-powered Ram SRT10. Remember the Viper-powered truck with a manual transmission? Bless them.
The Viper era’s over (RIP), but the Hellcat era is coming roaring back to life. The Ram TRX is returning with even more power, count 777 hp. Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis, the man known as the Father of the Hellcats, is also in charge of the resurrected SRT division. And poof, we are now getting a Rumble Bee with a 5.7-liter Hemi V8, a Rumble Bee 392 with the 6.4-liter Hemi V8, a Rumble Bee 392 Track Pack, and of course, a Rumble Bee SRT with the TRX’s Hellcat-sourced supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8 with 777 hp.
Lowered. Wider. Riding on 22-inch rolling stock wrapped in the widest tires the company’s ever fitted to a car outside of the Viper. And offered in a single Quad Cab short box configuration, which is 13 inches shorter than the Crew Cab short box setup. These street trucks are going to rip, and they look like, at least on paper, fully-baked street trucks.
If you’re going to do it, do it right. Looks like SRT has, which should be no shock to anyone that’s ever interacted with Tim Kuniskis. Now we are getting a full-size Hemi-powered truck that runs 11s on the way to Home Depot and you can thank Ram.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
