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It has been a busy week for Stellantis news, but one more Ram item has come to our attention. In yet another sign of how rapidly the company’s product development has accelerated, the 2027 Rumble Bee appears to be the first model built for MY2027 that will jettison auto-stop/start entirely since the federal government stopped incentivizing its inclusion earlier this year.
And more than that, it’s poised to be the only Ram sold with the old-school, non-electrified 5.7-liter V8. The Hemi offered in the standard Ram 1500 gets a mild hybrid assist.
The folks over at Motor1 first noticed that the 2027 Rumble Bee lacks the auto-stop/start toggle button typically found on Ram’s full-size pickups. Normally, we’d write this off to SRT shenanigans, as previous Hellcat-based models similarly lacked the toggle. We reached out to the truck builder for clarification, and indeed, this deletion extends to the 5.7- and 6.4-liter Rumble Bees.
Is this a sign of things to come for the standard 1500? We asked that too.
“You are correct that Rumble Bee does not have Stop/Start on any variant, nor does TRX.” a company spokesperson told The Drive via email. “Start/Stop technology availability will continue to vary by vehicle and market across our portfolio.”
“As always,” he continued, “we evaluate customer preferences, regulatory requirements, and overall vehicle design when making product decisions.”
I’m not hearing a “no” in there anywhere; are you? But, at least for the time being, neither the deletion of the mild hybrid nor the removal of auto start-stop will trickle down to the standard Ram 1500.
“We don’t have anything to share about additional updates to the 1500 lineup,” the spokesperson told us in a follow-up email.
With auto-stop/start eliminated and the hybrid out, there’s only one elephant left in the room: the Hemi’s cylinder deactivation system. The Stellantis brands refer to it as MDS (“Multiple Displacement System”). It has been around since 2005 and is essentially engineered into every 5.7- and 6.4-liter engine that rolls off the line. Unlike auto-stop/start, it would take more than a button to delete it.
Aftermarket solutions seem tantalizingly inexpensive until you read the fine print: they won’t work with the factory camshaft, making the fix a bit more complicated than its bolt-on nature might imply. Fortunately for DIYers, it looks like the cam swap can be done without removing the head. Small victories, right?
Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!
Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
