Dodge Ram SRT-10: Best Performance Truck Ever?
Boasting a Viper-sourced 500 HP while holding world record top speed times, the RAM SRT-10 will go down as timeless legend.
Back in the early 2000s, there was a crazy moment in time in which any person could walk into a Dodge dealership and leave with the keys to a six-speed manual transmission, V10-powered Ram truck. Nowadays, the thought of even seeing a V10 engine in a consumer vehicle is preposterous. Plus a manual transmission– in a truck? How this vehicle even got approval from a multi-billion corporation, we still aren’t sure. However, as strange as it may have seemed, there was a time when a RAM truck had a Lamborghini-designed engine.
Back then, Chrysler owed Lamborghini as a subsidiary. Why not take advantage of the Italian automaker’s vast knowledge in large displacement, higher cylinder racing engines to help develop a truck? Well, we are missing one minor detail, the engine that graced this SRT-10 Ram was built squarely for the at the time new Dodge Viper. The Viper would go on to change the face of the Chrysler as a company during this era. It would be recognized as stamping an aggressive and interesting stance in an otherwise forgetful catalog of homely, boring vehicles they had presented in recent years.
SRT-10 No Replacement for Displacement
Without a doubt, the key ingredient to making the Viper the hit that it was was it’s heart: the 8.0L V10 engine. The same crazy group of engineers that helped create this engine now decided it should make its way into a truck. Chrysler actually gave them $70 million dollars to make it happen. If you would like to learn a little bit more about what made this truck as special as it is, check out Mopar enthusiast Marspeed on Youtube, who provided a lot of this information in his video and goes into greater detail.
Establishing its Dominance Early
While the Ram SRT-10 was only in production for 3 short years between 2004-2006, it left a large impression on the automotive market with its unprecedented performance. Putting sports car engines into pickup trucks must be some kind of magic. The truck displayed some serious results- 154.587 mph: the fastest top speed of any production truck ever. This is no understatement, as the records still stands today.
See, the thing is, these Team Viper and Team Prowler engineers (who formed Chrylser’s Performance Vehicles Operations at the time before “SRT”) wind tunnel tested, and sculpted this truck to as many details as possible to achieve those results. Trucks by their bulky and heavy nature are difficult to make go fast, especially once you are going 120 mph and higher and drag/lift/downforce ratios really start to play a part. Wind resistance prompted these engineers to add the hood scoop, rear spoiler, lower suspension geometry and many other tweaks to achieve this lofty top speed.
A Rare Breed of Truck
The Ram SRT-10 since its release was never intended to generate massive profit margins for the company as a whole. However, it still sold surprisingly well for a limited production, collectable performance truck. About 10,000 Ram SRT-10s were sold including special editions. During the same time, the company was selling about 450,000 Ram 1500 trucks every year. The SRT-10 model represented on average .50 to 1.28 percent of overall sales.
A relatively minor focus for a company as massive Daimler-Chrysler. Essentially, they just said that just for this one time, it was okay to make something that didn’t make sense. Thank goodness that worked out because the end result was truly something special.
A 5,000+ pound pickup that would move to a serious 0-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That will destroy just about every single potential competition in the segment and then a whole host of cars that consider themselves “sports” cars. The only pickup to accelerate faster than the Ram SRT-10 hasn’t even been released yet. Oh yeah, its also a Ram 1500, known as the 2021 1500 TRX. Boasting a healthy 700+ HP from a 6.2-liter supercharged V8. Well over a decade and a half later and only now is the SRT-10 being challenged and it’s another Ram. We love that.
So while the Ram SRT-10 may be expensive to fix and have terrible fuel economy, nothing can change the fact that seeing one of these on the road will brighten your day. Trust us, there will never be another truck like this one. While the 2021 TRX will present an interesting alternative, it just isn’t the same knowing you have 8 liters of displacement ready at any time in a six-speed manual truck built for speed.
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