Heir to the short-lived but super-powerful Ram 1500 TRX, the 702-horsepower Hellcat-powered truck which appeared during the Covid era, the new 2025 Ram 1500 RHO 4×4 offers a similar package of brutalist looks and performance.

Unlike that 6.2-liter beast, the 2025 Ram gets a high-output (hence the name) rendition of the new straight-six turbocharged 3.0-liter Hurricane engine, upgraded from 420-hp to 540-hp and 521 lb-ft of torque. Running on premium fuel, this allows 4.6-second 0-60 acceleration and an increased top speed of 118 mph – pretty substantial, given the RHO’s 6,300-pound mass, its 234-inch-size and its standard 35-inch mud tires. 

The Mexican-made turbo engine doesn’t have quite the same thunderous tone as that old V-8, minus a noisy, high-revving start-up mode your neighbors will notice, but the power is truly explosive when needed. It’s also considerably faster overall than the TRX was – and perhaps more marginally fuel efficient, though I was not able to reach its stickered 15 mpg city/highway rating during my wintry outings. (Alternately, I never beat 10 mpg in the TRX, once.) 

In our particularly topsy-turvy world, where we could expect both huge increases in new car prices due to the nuanced and well-planned-out, daily changes in retaliatory North American manufacturing tariffs and sudden, major reversals of planning initiatives, my guess is you’ll eventually see regular Hemi gasoline engines re-integrated to some of Ram’s lineup. 

For now, RHO demonstrates that a non-traditional engine can add a lot to help round out what is an imposing and overly tech-loaded ultra-truck, with a base price of $70,000 and an as-tested price of $85,000 with nearly every option minus a sunroof.

With its Baja-styled body flares, a running-light-topped grille like a bank vault door and that enormous footprint of rubber, the RHO’s role as apex-predator highway intimidator is just that, until another yahoo in a Ram tailgates you aggressively, or Ford Raptors hear you coming.

It’s a tough world out there, even for the macho individuals who snap up these uber-trucks, but RHO’s stout presence will make it ideal for owners seeking a blocky, status-minded pickup experience. A two-inch lift also brings the ground clearance to 11.8 inches, making the truck a bit of a leap to board or clear snow off of, though fixed running boards here did help.

RHO might not get the full-sized box capacity found in other Ram builds, but it will still carry just over 1,500 pounds of payload and can tow up to 8,380 pounds, with a large and comfortable passenger space in the rear cab. 

For those who do venture off-road in the summer, RHO is well-equipped with a rock-crawling low range, plus an active damping system and performance shocks that also keep the truck feeling strangely smooth and planted at full highway speeds. Counterintuitively, RHO also includes a hands-free driving assist system for on-highway use; higher-speed cornering is still very much a hands-on affair here, with the lane keep control’s wheel-tickling advice also helpful at all times, given RHO’s 88-inch width, eight inches more than a regular Ram. 

The five-foot-seven box and RHO’s somewhat shorter, 145-inch wheelbase and its more summer/mud-oriented tires got me frequent tail-spin on a short, iced-over gravel road outing, but part of that can be attributed to the loss of automatic traction control when you dial up the higher performance modes on RHO’s comprehensive 14.5-inch display. (Mine also had the additional 10.5-inch passenger-side screen.) With so many data display modes on the instrument panel, you’ll be easily overwhelmed

Happily, you can easily switch traction control back on, as well as micro-managing dozens of the vehicle’s driving qualities, with the option to go full-open for off-road racing, or cut the power with a valet mode. If you’ve got money for new transmissions or are filming YouTube videos (or both), RHO also sports a launch control mode, though Ram emphasizes the vehicle’s long-lasting structural rigidity, despite all that outrageous power.

Inside, it’s the antithesis of muddy work truck. The full RHO build gets you massaging, ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a 19-speaker Harman Kardon stereo system and a full-color head-up display.        

Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at summitmountainwheels@gmail.com.