Muscle cars have traditionally been about providing big performance at an attainable price and that’s the plan for Ram’s new lineup of “muscle trucks.”
Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis brought couple of 1500 Rumble Bee prototypes to show off on the Jay Leno’s Garage YouTube program and revealed the brand’s pricing plans.
“We haven’t released pricing, but, I will tell you, our goal is to get this very much, heart of the market for a truck, in the roughly $60,000 range,” he said.
The base Rumble Bee will be powered by a 395 hp 5.7-liter V8 and come standard with a full-time four-wheel-drive system. While it will feature a unique widebody design in a Quad Cab and a short bed configuration, the price point lines up with a V8-powered Big Horn 4×4 with a V8, which is one of the 1500’s best-selling trims. It’s also about $10,000 more than a 420 hp Dodge Charger R/T.
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Kuniskis didn’t elaborate on pricing for the 470 hp Rumble Bee 392 or 710 hp Rumble Bee SRT, but had an SRT with him and noted it will be much more expensive. However, he pointed out that the base model has essentially the same style and that the Direct Connection catalog will be offering a range of parts to improve its performance as desired.
“This is the one we’re going to sell a lot of,” he said.
Ram hasn’t offered any projections for exactly how many Rumble Bees it expects to sell, but Kuniskis shared one interesting bit of information. He said that more than 80,000 Ram 1500 TRX trucks have been sold since it launched in 2021.
The off-road TRX trim has been on hiatus since 2024, but is returning later this year with a 777 hp supercharged 6.2-liter V8. It had a starting price of $96,585 when it was last offered in 2024, so the sales figure suggests there was very strong demand.
During the Rumble Bee reveal, Kuniskis admitted that he’s not sure the market is ready for street muscle truck, as the idea has never been wildly successful in the past, although he chalks some of that up to the fact that most of the prior efforts were two doors with single rows of seats.
