After decades hiding in the shadows of aftermarkets parts catalogs and one-off at-home builds, street trucks are so back. We’re talking lowered, sometimes force-fed pickups that can haul the toys and butt with aplomb, optimized for their primary environment: The street. Ford already offers the 700-horsepower FP700 package for V8-powered F-150s, several big tuners have had a crack at the latest half-tons, and now the Ram 1500 Direct Connection is here to dole out some racecar-towing Mopar muscle.
This Ram 1500 street truck is not an in-house vehicle, but it benefits from official distribution. See, it’s built by Fox Factory Vehicles and then sold through Mopar’s Direct Connection program. Considering the program’s previously let people buy full carbon fiber Dodge Charger bodies, Hellcat convertibles, and seven-liter Hellphant crate engines, a Ram 1500 street truck almost seems tame by those standards, and it’s probably the closest thing we’re getting to a spiritual Ram SRT-10 successor.
It all starts with a 5.7-liter Hemi V8-equipped crew cab Ram 1500, then slaps a Whipple supercharger on top and cranks up the output to 650 horsepower and 600 lb.-ft. of torque. From there, a three-inch drop courtesy of Ridetech coilovers gets the stance dialled in over a set of 22-inch wheels, a performance exhaust system brings the noise, and then Fox Factory Vehicles goes to town on the cosmetics.
We’re talking about a front splitter to visually lower the truck further, a rear spoiler, window tint, and all the trim pieces and graphics you can shake a stick at. Inside, this Ram 1500 can be optioned with black leather seats with gold stitching to match the exterior graphics, along with a special console badge and all-weather floor mats. Sure, it might be down on power compared to Ford’s 700-horsepower FP700 package for the F-150, but Ram and Fox Factory Vehicles seem to have cooked up a more cohesive street truck that touches on a little bit of everything just about equally.
Then again, this further treatment also commands a bigger price tag. The Fox Factory Vehicles Ram 1500 Direct Connection carries a price tag of $89,995 including freight, and that’s before you add four-wheel drive for an extra $4,045 and leather for an extra $1,085. Tick those boxes, and the Ram 1500 Direct Connection is knocking on the door of what Ram used to charge for the TRX in its final model year, and that 702-horsepower beast was an entirely different sort of phenomenon. It’s also hard to ignore that adding the $12,350 FP700 kit to a $58,115 Ford F-150 XLT crew cab with the five-liter V8, four-wheel-drive, and 3.73:1 axle ratio produces a substantially less expensive street truck. However, the Ram 1500 feels the most luxurious out of the current half-ton crop, and those graphics do look sweet. Plus, a three-year 36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty is nothing to sneeze at.
So, if you have money to burn, love a good street truck, and are Mopar-loyal, the Ram 1500 Direct Connection might be just the ticket for you. With 650 horsepower under the hood and proper suspension upgrades, it looks like a good time, and it can still tow 11,320 pounds. Did somebody say Section 179 deduction?
Top graphic image: Fox Factory Vehicles
That price is absolutely insane. A Whipple setup will run you about $10k with install and tuning at a performance shop. The 5.7 is also not known for being especially stout, even more so when boost is added to the equation. This truck serves only to give upper middle class men another reason to overspend on buying an overbuilt truck so they can pretend they are blue collar.
WOOHOO more power than the upcoming Ram Race Truck
Maybe this will be interesting in 12-15 years at a price mortals can swing. This current trend where there’s all these 100k trucks to choose from but barely any economy cars/trucks is a shit timeline.
Roots supercharger V8 power for the win. They will sell all of them no problem. Efficient no. Practical family vehicle yes. Expensive yes. Fast yes. Bragging rights for suburban dads yes. Expensive yes. If you got the cash who cares buy what you want. I want a whipple for my 2022 RAM now.
Are you a bot, buddy?
Yes, a Best Of Times bot
Wow that costs a lot more than it should.
This needs AWD, not 4WD. Getting the AWD transfer case from a Durango or Grand Cherokee with the hellcat would make this perfect.
It has 4WD auto as well
you are correct. aint no one taking this thing offroad on purpose.
That’s not 90 grand worth of truck
Rather have the Ford
I think it would have been better to take a TRX and remove the cost and height of the offroad bits. offer it with the the old Trackhawk AWD and hopefully reduce the price to a sub 70k number. If they offered two levels, one BGE 392 with 500HP for a scat pack price level I think they could halo out the 700HP hellcat versions and sell the NA 392 for less….the trick of course is fitting a manual trans in there to get the engines to be MDS free.
I think street trucks are cool, and I even somewhat like the current Ram styling, but damn that’s a tall front fascia. It doesn’t read as a street truck at all.
The FP700 is still tall, but it isn’t as visually heavy at the front. This just looks enormous.
Ram styling peaked in 1995 with the truck Walker Texas Ranger was driving. Unfortunate how the retro styling phase completely passed by trucks
It’s as much of a street truck as the Viper is a minivan or Dank Demoss is a ballerina. But JFC this thing is hideous…
Probably doesn’t need to last more than 3-months/3-cars-and-coffees.*
*and/or street takeovers.
Ideally would last 96mo because that’s the minimum term they will be financed
More big vehicles. More gas guzzlers. More of the same. This is what kills them in the future. No forward movement.
Yeah, my first thought when reading the headline was, “That could have just been a ponycar. Why does it need to be a truck?”
I’ve eagerly been waiting for the return of the street truck, they are a bit of a guilty pleasure. But that price…. ouch.
Everyone has said that V8 sedans died out due to CAFE; they could have easily been replaced by street trucks but those died out before sedans did and haven’t returned. If this was basically a truck form of a Scat Pack or Hellcat, I’d be on board, but boy oh boy is it way more expensive.
At least it makes up for that by also having a way worse base engine to build off of
Can’t wait to be cut off by one of these weaving in and out of highway traffic blasting a lifter tick louder than the supercharger whine
Lifter ticks probably only affect some “rednecks” whose trucks are extensively modified. Non abused, non idled 5.7s will be fine.
I have a prediction, which is that the truck manufacturers toying with factory street trucks could very well signal a trend that could be applied to the crossover market. The current hotness of course is the soft roader, but now that everyone is doing it and has been for a few years there is going to be a change in what’s cool/desirable and I for one think that change could be lowering an inch instead of raising an inch and doing away with all the cladding.
I honestly could see this being the next thing and for the first one to do it making a killing amongst all the CUV buyers looking for something different. Then everyone will do it and in 7-10 years we’ll be looking for what’s next.
And frankly I’m down with that. Factory “street” crossovers could be a fun alternative. Just make sure fun, bright colors are an option again!
can’t wait for that future, and I think you are right. There’s a clamoring for sportier trucks and suvs I think.
Colors? Buyers, which are dealers, don’t buy colors. Lowest denominator wins. I hope you like black and silver. Guesses on interior?
I’m looking for pictures of a street truck here and not finding any. This thing is too tall and too long.
It’s definitely set up more as a family hauler truck than a street truck. Dodge used to build a true street truck with the Ram SRT-10 that was short bed, single cab, RWD, less ground clearance than this, and had summer tires. For good measure they even slapped a big wing on the bed to stop you from trying to use it as a truck. ‘Merica!
When I was in college, this is the kind of stuff that foreign exchange students from the middle east and new Jersey frat boys absolutely loved. Campus was lousy with SRT8 Cherokees, SVT F-150s and Cayenne’s decked out in Gemballa goofiness. One of these students iconically drove a CTS-V through the sign at the main gate. All that to say – there is a whole world of young men with access to unearned money (or credit) that will love this thing.
You are right.
Rams (TRX for sure, the RHOs and I6s are not selling well- maybe if the V8 is back things will turn around) are popular with locals in Qatar (though some expats have it), but Ford and GMC/Chevrolet outnumber them. Tundra comes in last (probably as the dealer we have does NOT sell them). Titan? Well, have seen 2 or 3 over the past 3 years. Not much.
That is exactly also what drives values of Toyotas up in the used market. People are scared that these trucks have issues (although the vast majority run without problems, plus and minus of course), so they clamor for Land Cruisers/Prados/Fortuners and Lexus cars that are obviously tired and worn out to pay the “tax” for them, but maintenance and parts are expensive and the dealer charges 4 digits.
I should clarify that the 4 digits and maintenance + parts expenses are for the pickups, NOT for Toyota/Lexus on the used market.
But being tired, old, and probably driven abusively on road and off road, at 300k kms, most Prados/Fortuners/Land Cruisers/Lexus LX will likely have something that can break.
They’d better be careful with this. Part of what got Nissan in trouble is that a bumper-to-bumper warranty on an Altima covers almost a whole city.
Costs the better part of $100K? And more than that after tax/title/registration? What is a 600-700 horsepower truck good for exactly? Each to his or her own of course, but stuff like this always seems to bring out the worst in drivers.
And the Kia Soul is cancelled? Decent, cheap, well-warrantied, and with a bit of style?
What a dystopia we inhabit. 🙁 Where did the timeline go bad?
When the Cubs won the 2016 World Series.
9/11?
3 year bumper to bumper warranty… uh, until a catastrophic failure and then they will just try to buy out the warranty and leave ya hanging
Me: I must begrudgingly admit that this is kind of cool
“ The Fox Factory Vehicles Ram 1500 Direct Connection carries a price tag of $89,995 including freight, and that’s before you add four-wheel-drive for an extra $4,045 and leather for an extra $1,085”
Lol. Lmao, even. I think the people that buy six figure trophy trucks already have several, but who knows….there’s never been a better time to be rich than right now
Has there ever been a bad time? French Revolution doesn’t count.
I really hope Nissan makes an EREV pickup.