Video: 2025 Ram 1500 Review: The Hemi Is Dead, But You’re Gonna Be OK

Well, we're gonna take you through and show you exactly what those new powertrains do to the 25 Ram 1500. We're gonna show you how it affects how you use them in terms of towing and off-roading. And then we're gonna show you the new top Tungsten trim level. You thought Ram 1500s were nice before? Wait 'til you get a load of this thing, let's get started. (upbeat music) So perhaps the biggest thing to know about the '25 RAM 1500 is that the powertrains are new. Well, two outta the three of them are anyway, and that big news is that the HEMI V8 is dead. Yeah, I know this is a hard one to swallow, but the HEMI is gone. There is actually no V8 engine option in the new Ram 1500. What have they done instead? Well, there are three engines to know about for the new 1500. The base one is still the Pentastar V6, and I know a lot of people out there are going, oh man, that thing's been around forever. It's so old, it's not great, it's not all that smooth. The Pentastar V6 is a perfectly fine engine, folks. They've made a ton of them. They're pretty well bulletproof by now. They're cheap to produce for Ram. There's tons of parts if you need to ever fix anything. So I think as a base model engine, that is perfectly fine. It still makes 305 horsepower, so it's not the most powerful thing in the world, but you're really only gonna see it in the two base model trim levels, the Tradesman and the Big Horn. And even then you can still get the optional engine for those two trim levels as well. And that's what's under the hood of this one. They're calling it the SST, the straight six turbo. It is a three liter twin turbocharged in line six cylinder engine, and it's making more horsepower than the outgoing 5.7 liter V8 did. How much does this new three liter SST make? Well, it makes 420 horsepower and 469 pounds feet of torque. That's nothing to sneeze at. That is some serious horsepower, some serious torque out of a six cylinder engine. We've driven this engine before in the Jeep Wagoner, but this is our first time driving it in the Ram 1500, where it's gonna be pretty much probably the most popular engine option they have across the lineup. And so far I'm pretty impressed. Now what makes this engine so impressive? The only thing that you're missing from the HEMI V8 to the three liter SST is the V8 verbal engine noise. Everything else about this engine pretty much seems to be superior. It is much quieter, it is much smoother. It has pretty much instant torque as soon as you want it. Put your foot down, there's no lag, there's no issues. It just goes, it's got two turbochargers, but they're smaller turbochargers and each one is fed by three cylinders. So the thing can spool up pretty quickly and really there's no turbo lag at all. All of the engines are made it to an eight speed automatic transmission. That's the same eight speed we've seen that ZF unit in pretty much all of Stellantis and even before them FCA, and even before them Chrysler products for years. It's not 10 speeds like you get in the GM products or in the Ford full-size pickup trucks. But you know what? This thing has just been around forever and it's really good. So I have no complaints about not having the two extra gears that you'd get in say a Ford F-150 or a Chevrolet Silverado. But the top engine in the new Ram 1500, that's the three liter twin turbo SST H/O, it's the six cylinder twin turbo charged engine, but the high output version and it makes 540 horsepower and 521 pounds feet of torque, which pretty much makes it the most powerful engine that you can get in a mainstream light duty pickup truck. No, we're not talking about supercharged stuff like you used to get at a TRX or you know, some other Raptor stuff can also be a little more powerful. I'm talking about the mainstream truck like this because that SST H/O engine is gonna be standard equipment in three of the Ram 1500 trim levels for 2025. You'll get it in the limited Longhorn, in the Limited and in the Tungsten trim level, which is that new top super luxury trim level that we'll be driving in just a moment. This is a Laramie trim level and it is very well equipped and probably gonna be extremely expensive. Laramie starts at about $60,000, which is a bit of a price bump from where it used to be. But looking at all of the stuff that you have in here, there's a lot more equipment, there's a lot more standard features in here. You've got a lot more safety equipment in here as well. Some of these automatic driving assistance features such as automatic stop and Go Cruise control is now standard across all trim levels of the new Ram 1500. So items like that are really bringing a lot more value to the fact that they've bumped the prices across the board by an average of about $2,500. But powertrains are really important to a lot of pickup drivers and to shoppers. But when we're talking about standard engines in these pickup trucks, the the Pentastar V6 is a solid bulletproof engine, but it's still gonna get outgunned by what comes in the Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150. The 2.7 liter turbocharged four cylinder in the Silverado, yeah, makes more power than the Pentastar V6 and so does the 2.7 liter twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 that comes in the Ford F-150 as well. So yeah, you're gonna get outgunned if you just stick it to the base engine in the Tradesman or the Big Horn. But that base engine, I don't think it's gonna see a whole lot of day. It might in fleets for Tradesman models that are going into work fleets, things like that. Most people, I think they're gonna opt for the engine that's underhood here. This standard output three liter SST in line six, it's a fantastic engine. It was a fantastic engine in the Jeep Wagoner. It makes just all kinds of sense. It's an aluminum engine as well, so it's got an aluminum block, aluminum heads, it's got a direct injection, it's got dual overhead cams. I mean it's a fully modern powerful engine that they've put in this thing and it's just smooth, especially at speed. There's very little engine noise when you're motoring along at highway speeds, you get more wind noise than anything else. The refinement that they've put into it really elevates the Ram 1500 I think to a new level. Just stay away from that base V6. The other thing to know about the new '25 Ram 1500, in addition to the powertrains, is really how well do those powertrains affect how you use a new Ram 1500. And there's two ways that a lot of people use their pickup trucks that would be most affected by these new powertrains. First is towing. I have behind me a 7,300 pound Airstream trailer. The maximum towing capacity for the new 25 Ram 1500 is 11,580 pounds. That is considerably less than you get in the competitors. It's 13,300 pounds for the Chevrolet Silverado and 13,500 pounds for a Ford F-150. Now when we're talking about maximum towing capacity, it's almost always a very special case of that vehicle. It's the shortest version of it necessarily. Sometimes a single cab model if that's even offered in a light duty pickup truck with the biggest engine and two wheel drive. So that's obviously not what the maximum capacity is for this one. I'm not angry about Ram not going after the maximum towing capacity. The straight six turbo in this thing, the three liter SST engine makes more power, makes more torque than the outgoing 5.7 liter V8. And it is perfectly happy dragging this trailer along behind this thing without any issue whatsoever. If you're looking to actually tow something that is approaching those limits of like 13,000, 14,000 pounds, honestly you should be doing it with an HD truck anyway and not a light duty truck because if you tow something that heavy with a light duty truck, you are putting a lot of strain on your light duty truck, on its brakes, on its transmission. Yeah, it'll do it, but you're gonna wear your truck out a lot faster. Something like this, a 7,000 to 10,000 pound trailer is really what the maximum would be that I would tow with a light duty truck. And frankly, this one's doing just fine. You have the air suspension in this model, which does help level things out quite a bit. But you've also got that coil sprung rear axle, which improves ride quality when you've got something back there and when you don't have something back there, it's just stable, it's confident, there's plenty of torque. Up these grades especially, no issues whatsoever, especially when you put it in tow hall mode, the HP transmission just keeps things where it needs to be. You're not going to miss the V8 when it comes to towing, that pretty much certain, it's a towing machine. And when you're towing with the '25 Ram 1500, there is something else to note. They've changed around the display and controls a little bit on some models. And in this bottle, the Laramie, with the 14 and a half inch vertical display, some of the controls are now part of the actual display itself. Some are still hard buttons. For your trailer brake controller, well, you still have a manual activation switch which will, you know, pull you down if you need to. But to adjust the game, that's part of the digital display now. So it kind of combined the two of them into it. It's not such a big deal. You don't really adjust the gain as you're driving all that often anyway. You really wanna do that before you've set out in a parking lot. So yeah, it's not a big deal and what I do like is that it's here, it's not down on the dash, it's not somewhere that you can't find it. It's easily right here, it's immediately available. That definitely helps in terms of towing confidence. When you're towing, you sometimes want to limit where your transmission is shifting to, you don't want it to necessarily go all the way to eighth or if you're going down a downhill, maybe you wanna keep it in third or fourth or fifth, you use that right here. This is the gear limiter selector on the steering wheel. Because the shifter is a rotary shifter and it's not there, if you really want to limit how the transmission works, well, that control is on your steering wheel. So the other way that people are probably gonna want to know about how these new powertrains affect the Ram 1500 is, how does it do, I'm gonna put this window up because I'm about to go through some mud (laughs). How does it do off road? And of course there is still a Rebel trim level like this one. This is the off road version of the new '25 Ram 1500 and it has all the same goodies that the Rebel had in the prior generation as well. In fact, really not much has changed underhood except that engine. The standard engine in the Rebel is now that three liter twin turbo standard output in line six cylinder engine, the SST, the straight six turbo. And the thing is, it's just as good off road as it is towing as it is on road. I am just perpetually amazed by how quiet the thing is. It's totally refined, it's nearly silent. You get a lot more noise from everything else in the truck, from the tires, from the wind, from the the air rushing past, the A-pillars. And even then there's not a whole lot of that either. It's an incredibly quiet and refined truck. And off road, this thing does exactly everything that the old Rebel did. It's just doing it, and again, without that big V8 verbal. But again, I don't miss it because this new SST engine is just fantastic. You put this thing in low gear like now and it just crawls over anything that you point it at easily, easily as comfortable as a Chevrolet Silverado ZR2, if not a little bit more, it actually feels a little bit quieter inside than the ZR2 does, which is a nice surprise. Now I am behind the wheel of the third powertrain offering. This is the high output SST. It makes 540 horsepower and 521 pounds feet of torque, which makes it one of the most powerful engines that you could buy in a pickup truck today. It is a little bit different than the other three liter straight six turbo. It's more than just boosting the turbos. They've actually done a number of changes for a lot of the internals of this engine to make it more robust and to be able to handle a lot more power. And when you put this thing down out, yeah (laughs), this thing actually really does move pretty smartly for a huge pickup like this. And again, though, the thing that's missing is that V8 roar. You don't have it, there's a really nice verbal from it, but it doesn't have that visceral punch. Again, I don't think you're gonna miss it. It is the only thing that you're not getting with this new powertrain that you did with the old V8 is that great big roar. And for some people that's gonna be important. But honestly, if you really aren't that concerned about having that word HEMI on the side of the hood and you're okay with it instead staying SST H/O, you're gonna be I think pretty pleased with the fact that they have changed this engine for the better. It is more powerful, it is definitely quieter. It is a lot smoother than just by any of the engines I've ever tried in any Ram product at speed, on the highway. It is just really, really nice. So we've run through the powertrains and we've run through how the powertrains affect how you use a new 1500 in terms of offroading and in towing. But there's one more thing that shoppers need to know about the new 25 Ram 1500, and that's this. This is the new Tungsten trim level. It sits atop the pantheon of trim levels for the Ram 1500, brand new for 2025. It is the ultimate expression of pickup truck luxury from the Ram brand and they've really upped their game with this one. You thought that the Ram 1500 was luxurious and had the best in class interior before? Well, they have thrown down the gauntlet for this one because they have made an even nicer interior. Now, what makes it so incredible? First of all, just about everything in here is covered in leather, the doors, the seats, the steering wheel, the dash, the center console, it's all stitched. It's all in some really beautiful colors and it looks fantastic. The seats in here are also unique to the Tungsten trim level. They are 23 way adjustable, massaging and heated seats. They look fantastic, they feel even better. You've also got some new equipment in here as well. That's a 14 and a half inch vertical touchscreen. You can get it in a couple of the other models as well. But it comes standard obviously in the Tungsten and it includes the Uconnect five multimedia system, which is faster and connects a lot more quickly than really any of the Uconnect systems that I've experienced before. So works really well. But in terms of screens, you got even more of them in here than you did before. The passenger side gets a 10.25 inch screen like we've seen in the Grand Cherokee and the Grand Wagoner and it's about as useful here as it is there. This is really more of a gimmicky part of things. You really can't see it very well, it's very dim. You can't see it at all from the driver's seat because it's got a filter on it. You don't want the driver distracted by a streaming video or the passenger doing something with it. You've also got a digital instrument cluster that's got unique graphics for the Tungsten trim level and you've also got a big full color heads up display as well. So there are tons of screens in here and there are still some hard buttons. So they haven't completely gone touch sensitive, which is a good thing, that there are still hard controls, it's an element that we really like in any vehicle. Also a first for the Ram brand, they've got a new joint venture with Klipsch Audio. The premium sound system in here is a 23 speaker, 1,228 watt system that should pretty much blow you away. And it's not just they've slapped a name on it. They actually worked pretty closely with Klipsch in order to develop this system and they've even incorporated a lot of the design aesthetic that Klipsch uses for a lot of their home high-end media systems as well. So it should really bring in another element of luxury to this admittedly very expensive trim level. The new 2025 Ram 1500 goes on sale in dealerships towards the end of March of 2024. Prices are gonna range from about $40,000 for a base Tradesman all the way up to almost $90,000 for a loaded Tungsten like this one here. And if you'd like to learn more about the new 2025 Ram 1500 pickup or any of the Ram lineup, you can look everything up on cars.com. (upbeat music)