If you’re like me, early signs of the Stellantis redemption arc have been something to marvel at. New leadership, a refocus on vehicles Americans actually want, starting to make V8s and electrification an either/or choice instead of an ultimatum. While things are still in early stages since product development takes ages, we’ll have to see how things continue to play out, but a big nugget of news just dropped: SRT is back, and Mopar legend Tim Kuniskis is behind the wheel.
If you aren’t familiar with SRT, think of it to Dodge as AMG is to Mercedes-Benz, or at least as AMG used to be. It’s a subsidiary building hardcore, muscled-up street machines that don’t normally pay lip service to subtlety. Fitting, considering it started life with a mission rather than a name—to build a modern-day Shelby Cobra. Yep, the Viper marked the unofficial start of SRT, but things didn’t really get cooking until the team behind the flagship merged with the team behind the unusual Plymouth Prowler to create Specialty Vehicle Engineering, which then changed its name to Performance Vehicle Operations and unleashed its first two vehicles that weren’t two-seat sports cars: the Dodge Neon SRT-4 and the Dodge Ram SRT-10.
It’s easy to forget that the SRT name didn’t come on anything with a V8 until the mid-aughts, but the Neon SRT-4 and Ram SRT-10 were both magnificent in their own ways. The Neon was a scrambling, frantic example of pumping 10 pounds of speed into a five-pound car. From the very real boost gauge to the almost cartoonishly over-the-top BFGoodrich tires on later models, to the fact that this 2003 debut could go toe-to-toe with the Mustang GT of the time in a straight line, the Neon SRT-4 brought tuner car attitude to a whole new crowd.
One year later, the Ram SRT-10 dropped in from above to settle the street truck debate by shoving an 8.3-liter Viper V10 engine and a Tremec six-speed manual transmission into a single cab half-ton pickup. Drop the hammer and this brick of rolling insanity won’t let up until 154 mph, making it still the fastest series production pickup truck ever.
By 2004, it was clear this SRT name would be a thing, so Performance Vehicle Operations became SRT, an initialism for Street and Racing Technology. One year later, Chrysler launched the LX-platform rear-wheel-drive Chrysler 300 and Dodge Magnum, and we all know what happened next. The 300C, Magnum, Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger, and even the Jeep Grand Cherokee got a 6.1-liter naturally aspirated V8 and SRT-8 badging, a formula that stepped things up to a 6.4-liter naturally aspirated V8 in the early half of the 2010s. The Viper got more insane too, even with a brief hiatus. The coupe returned, displacement increased, power increased, and winged variants appeared for the most serious trackday warriors. Slide the oft-forgotten Dodge Caliber SRT-4 and the AMG-retread Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 in the mix for good measure, and you get a picture of where SRT stood in the few years before it essentially became a household name.
Yeah, in 2014, SRT went berserk. It took its V8, dropped displacement to 6.2 liters, added a supercharger, and stuffed it into the Dodge Challenger and Charger. The result was the SRT Hellcat, 707 horsepower in package that wasn’t just for rich lunatics, but for almost all lunatics. It was a fast freakin’ car that was instantly dubbed a blue collar hero, and it turned the aging Challenger and Charger around. The halo effect helped the Challenger eventually outsell the Ford Mustang, and SRT didn’t stop there. The 2018 model year saw the launch of the 840-horsepower Challenger SRT Demon, that technology trickled down into the Charger and Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeyes, the Hellcat motor made it into the Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat, Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk and the Ram 1500 TRX, and for the curtain call, SRT made the Challenger Demon 170, a corn juice-fed 1,025-horsepower monster of a factory muscle car.
Wait, curtain call? Ah, yeah. See, the early 2020s would see a shift in leadership. Chrysler as we know it merged with PSA to create Stellantis, with Carlos Tavares heading up the group. In 2021, Mopar Insider reported that Stellantis would be dissolving the SRT team, with the engineers scattering across Stellantis. This was generally regarded as a bad move, and probably should’ve been seen as the canary in the coal mine for Stellantis’ mismanagement of its American divisions. Over the next few years, Jeep would try to become a luxury brand, the Hemi V8 would die off in passenger cars and half-ton pickup trucks, the Chrysler brand still wouldn’t get any new product, and the Dodge Charger and Challenger would be replaced with an EV. Dodge boss Tim Kuniskis decided it was time for retirement, and while nobody knew what was next, it didn’t look good.
Then, things changed. Tavares exited, and Kuniskis came out of a seven-month retirement to lead Ram. Over a few short months, his leadership has brought the 5.7-liter V8 back to the half-ton Ram 1500, launched a ton of new reasonably priced heavy duty variants, and made plans to bring the brand back to NASCAR. The resulting buzz has been so successful, it’s not surprising to hear Stellantis announce that Kuniskis is going to be leading all of the company’s North American brands going forward. Oh, and in the process, he’s bringing back the SRT crew, stating “We’re getting the band back together.”
So, what can we expect from the new, rejuvenated SRT? Well, we know that team will manage motorsport programs and Direct Connection performance parts in North America, but Kuniskis did mention that product development engineers would be on this new team, so hold onto your butts. Things are heating up again in Auburn Hills, and while the chances of a Viper revival or something similar are slim, the SRT cars of the past indicate we should get excited about the SRT cars of the future.
Top graphic images: Stellantis
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I don’t think this will go well, but it could be fun if it works. Let’s daydream for a moment:
Hopefully I didn’t leave anyone out.
Can’t wait to see fleets of stolen, 2,000 horsepower, or whatever ridiculous number theyre going to use to top themselves, Chargers zipping around, crashing and sideshowing their way all across America. Good times.
And don’t forget clogging up car shows. Naming your car after a character from a piece of pop culture you should’ve outgrown when you were in high school is not a mod. They’re literally the Funko Pops of cars.
It gives us salvage buyers more to buy.
My personal take is that this is the kind of thing you wait to do until your company is no longer on the verge of collapsing.
To be fair most people who drive chargers and challengers stole them while also having an active warrant out for a separate crime.
I’d say maybe they’re kinda trying to get ahead of that – the US parts of Stellantis seem to have decided to focus on selling strictly to the counterculture. It’s a fairly unoccupied area right now, so it makes sense.
Ford sells to the culture (all SUVs and trunks), and GM is still doing its giant automaker bit, so domestically at least, Stellantis is looking for its niche.
I get being the cool, rebel brand, but that image is only going to get them so far. They still need competitive cars priced affordably. Right now they have neither.
“Let’s all just admit we have run out of ideas”
I just want them to come out and say that they’ve already captured both the Young Veteran and the High Gangster markets better than Nissan could ever hope to. It’s hard to manage a Venn diagram with almost no overlap. Can they figure out the rest? That’s the key to success. High veterans? Young gangsters? The sky is the limit!
*YMMV based on prevalence of veterans and gangsters in local area
All the vets I know like to toke up.
Make an electric van with range that doesn’t suck. Call it the Super Van or something. Lean into the excellent qualities EV’s have for road trips. Quiet, effortless torque and tons of space. VW missed the mark not giving the US the hot version of the Buzz. Electric speed is relatively cheap. Having a van that can blitz sporty cars in a straight line and keep up in the bends would be something to behold. Electric muscle cars didn’t work out. Fast people movers may be onto something.
Ford may have something to say about that.
https://professionalvan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Ford-Transit-Supervan-1971-Restoration-2024-Professional-Van-02-1024×576.webp
“ Electric speed is relatively cheap.”
That is what is great about this. Every dude who buys one of these is going to get completely dusted at the drag strip rendering the entire exercise humiliating and pointless. It is like being coal rolled without soot and noise.
EV’s accelerate pretty quickly without feeling it. Rather, the regular occupants adapt to the acceleration. To the tooner boi thinking that EV was racing them: son, it wasn’t even trying.
Its still amazing to see an person actually goose it off the line in an EV. A guy did that in a Tesla Model 3 next to me the other day, it looks almost unreal and I bet he didn’t even give it the full beans.
Tim has the same aura as MOLLE webbing
I can’t believe I get this reference but I do, and you’re right.
He does seem very tactical.
Reminds me I gotta get a haircut.
Ooh yay can’t wait to see “SRT-Line” badging everywhere.
Coming to a Hornet near you 🙂
At least SRT isn’t as self-mocking as TRD when trying to pronounce it as a word.
I worry about the sustainability of all of this. Kuniskis can be Mr. Big Manly Man Alpha In Charge who wants V8s in DEFIANCE for his loyal customers but eventually the bill will come due. The American Stellantis brands have been circling the drain specifically because they’ve relied on big, loud, thirsty engines to sell the cars on their own. They failed to adapt, so now the brain genius move is….we’re gonna make big, loud, thirsty engines EVEN HARDER, FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER?
It’ll make their core customers happy but to me it kind of feels like delaying the inevitable. The US might be blissfully unconcerned about climate change and hostile towards electrification but the rest of the world is not…not to mention whenever the pendulum swings next the regulations the current administration is happily destroying will come right on back.
I personally don’t think this will end well…and while I genuinely really enjoy big, brash, loud, powerful vehicles I don’t think bringing them back from a brief and much maligned nap is going to keep Dodge and RAM afloat forever. They have desperately needed to adapt for a decade now and the nostalgia fueled return to what got them in this situation in the first place seems like a band aid on a bullet wound.
…but then again all this could be irrelevant if the SRT vehicles are actually compliant in other parts of the world and/or there’s some electrification thrown in. But come on…do we REALLY think that’s the plan?
SRT has always been a pretty North America-centric idea though.
A powerful V8 in a large vehicle wasn’t much more appealing to Europeans in 2005 than it is now.
Honestly, this hubris seems all very “It’s November 2007”.
A friend of mine worked at Lehman Brothers at that time.
Those were the best of times, she said.
I think Ford probably did this the best. They offered several versions of the Ecoboost, while still having the Coyote option in the trucks. They developed the Godzilla engine for the heavy duties, but still offer the Diesel. They have EV options that are incredibly…normal. I wish they’d offer more car options tho.
In fairness the mindset SRT has seems to parallel the federal government’s at the moment. I can’t wait for polluted asbestos water to come out of my faucet because regulations are bad.
Following my general “not every car needs to be for everyone” thesis – Dodge has an audience, and that audience is going to be late to the EV adoption curve. Dodge announced several EVs that were pretty tailor-made to be adopted by their audience and had them rejected Hard. I think eventually Dodge pivots to EVs, and I’d actually expect those EVs to look a lot like what they just tried to do, but their intended audience has told them in no uncertain terms that they’re not going to be early -or even late – adopters (the phrase “my cold dead hands” comes to mind).
This is, in theory at least, the benefit of having a stable of brands under one roof – you can customize your different product lines for different audiences. Dodge will be late to the EV game, and that’s fine – SRT and the Hemi revival buys them another decade of relevance while they wait for the world to present a more compelling case for electrification to their intended customers.
“ Dodge announced several EVs that were pretty tailor-made to be adopted by their audience and had them rejected Hard”
Dodge’s EVs have been rejected because they are horrible, compromised products.
I mean, the Chargers are compromised products, the question is which set of compromises you want. Dodge hit the wrong ones, wherein they took the thing all of their customers were compromising For – a giant angry V8 – out of the product in favor of the thing all of their customers were compromising against – fuel efficiency, climate, etc.
I don’t mean any of that to be a critique – I drive something that burns dinosaurs and am in the process of buying another one. My car is also horribly compromised – storage space, efficiency, repair costs, modern amenities- but those are all compromises I’m happy to make. Dodge’s customers weren’t willing to make the compromises Dodge wanted them to for an electric car, because they don’t want an electric car, so the set of compromises they’re willing to make for that is None.
Ford didn’t just dump the 3.5 Ecoboost on the market and walk away.
They built up the Ecoboost over many years to showcase that it can do all kinds of things that people previously felt could only be done by V8s.
Stellantis doesn’t want to put in the long-term work needs, I wish them the best of long-term failures with this strategy of intentionally alienating “new”.
I was only interested in cars from Dodge because they had twin turbo inline 6. This way I could buy Italian car instead of German to get that kind of engine. Now they are back to pushrod 6.4 liter V8 which are boring (I had one for 13 years)
My car won’t be an orphan anymore!
Well, sort of.
Either way, I’m cautiously optimistic. There’s a lot of ways this could go badly.
It’s Stellantis. Even with new management in place saying the right things, I would not hold my breath on them doing a good job with it.
I’m going to take this as they really are going to merge Ram back with Dodge and Tim gets to run them. No I will not listen to reason.
One can hope!
What exactly do they really have anymore that they can STR-ify besides the 1500 or maybe the Grand Cherokee? The Durango is a dinosaur, the small Jeeps aren’t very good and the Hornet is a hot mess. The Pacifica (also kind of a dinosaur by now)? A Wrangler SRT? Do we need either of those? I can’t even image how terrifying a Wrangler SRT would be to drive on anything but glass flat roads.
I suppose there is the new charger once they get a gas powered variant on the road but who knows how far down that line that will be.
They already had a Wrangler SRT sorta. They had the 392 version.
Right, so what would they have to do to up the ante on that with an SRT version? The 392 had tons of power but handling was generally primitive at best. So an SRT version would presumably need to handle better. But is that something anyone really wants? A slammed Wrangler with low profile summer tires, high spring rates, stiff swaybars and rolling on live axles?
Make it a SRT Rzr with huge suspension to go dune jumping.
Experience Death Wobble like never before. Defy death and dismemberment in the all new Wrangler SRT-10!
I don’t think you’ll be defying it!
That was my first thought. They don’t have a single vehicle I would be interested in an SRT version of.
They barely have a single vehicle.
I vote for the Pacifica. I’d buy that.
I rented a Pacifica a bit back – say what you will about Chrysler in other areas, but they really do have Minivan in their DNA. A bit more power would be genuinely fun in that car.
If I were Stellantis I’d go full in on range extended BEVs instead of ‘traditional’ hybrids, and focus build quality and parts allocation.
If a Stellatis automobile hits a dealer lot only to be found to be broken from the factory, the assembly line for said vehicle gets shut down till the parts to fix the broken brand new automobile are allocated, might as well do an audit of the assembly line while you’re at it to see how it ended up going to a dealership when broken.
Can’t wait for the SRT Pacifica and Hornet!
As an aside, how depressing must it be to manage the Chrysler website? You have 3 versions of the Pacifica and that’s it. I know it’s been that way for awhile but I guess I never went to their site before. Really just sad.
If they bring back the SRT Neon, I’d be a customer.
If the paint didn’t peel off, anyway.
> if the paint didn’t peel off
So you Don’t want a Neon.
some people don’t recognize a feature when they see it. car starts out as (what was it… strawberry red?) and slowly transforms to rusty sheet metal brown patina.
custum boyz pay big bucks for that and here dodge is including it free with every purchase.
DontGiveMeHope.gif
New and creative ways for vehicles to crap out most likely.
This doesn’t really cost anything but it also doesn’t really add anything. They need to make a value play if they want to thrive.
Get quality under control, boost warranties until they do.
Make fun cheapish cars again. 4 cyl 2 door wrangler type with big ass sunroof or targa top and neonish hybrid. land them under 25k so kids (under 35) buy them as second vehicles in a young household instead of ebikes.
“We’re Getting the Band Back Together”
Maybe if that band is Van Halen, and nobody expects anything better from this tour than a rehash of their old hits.
They’ll have their 15 minutes, release a ‘Best Of’ album that has nothing from this century, and break up again.
Prove me wrong, Stellantis.
I’m sure folks will be lined up around the block for that SRT Pacifica.
I mean, a screaming hot minivan wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
SRT is back and Diddy was found not guilty, lube prices are gonna sky rocket!
This is promising, but they really need some cars to add SRT to first.
I imagine the Gas powered Charger in all door variants will likely end up debuting with a V8 if the new guard has anything to say about it. It would be interesting to see if they try to pull an SRT6 badge out of the hat and really juice up the Hurricane in the middle range charger. I could see that little 3.0 with a slightly different rod ratio and a bigger set of turbo’s giving an old 707 Hellcat a bit of a run for the money. Still like that they would have choices and you might buy that over the big V8 if you say liked to track more than drag race.
They need some cars to add to Dodge, Chrysler, Ram, Alfa, Fiat, et al.
So this means a new Viper right? RIGHT? Even better, add two cylinders to the Hellcat motor and release it into the world.
I mean, don’t they actually need to build some vehicles, if they want to make SRT versions of those vehicles? Dodge has a rebadged Italian crossover that doesn’t sell, a badly aging big crossover, a couple Chinese rebadges in Mexico, and a $60,000 electric coupe that nobody’s buying. Chrysler has an old minivan.
There’s not much there, for sure, but easy to speculate that we’ll at least see something from Jeep–mostly likely based on the GC–and the gas-powered Charger. The Durango in SRT guise refuses to die and will return for 2026 (and beyond?). The Compass would be the target for an SRT4… slam it, boost it, wing it.
The big question I have is how Kuniskis plans to do this with an increasingly hybridized lineup. I would imagine it would be difficult to impossible to drop a bigger engine in the Hornet, let alone the new hybrid Cherokee.
For a hybrid SRT they could add an electrically assisted turbo
Good.
The current Ram 1500 has to many doors to be considered sporty.