Yahoo Autos 2021 Ram 1500 TRX First Drive | King of the Jurassic parking lot
Looking over the spec sheet of the 2021 Ram 1500 TRX, it’s hard not to think America has hit peak pickup truck. Everything about the TRX is bigger, better and badder than any truck that’s come before, including its one obvious bogey, the Ford F-150 Raptor. For starters, the Ram has a 252-horsepower and 140-pound-foot advantage on the Ford. That means the TRX is quicker and faster, and it can haul and tow marginally more. The TRX has a nicer interior and its supercharged V8 engine sounds a heck of a lot better than the Raptor’s turbocharged V6. Altogether, that ought to equal a truck that’s more fun to drive.
The TRX certainly doesn’t hide its off-road-performance intentions under subtle bodywork. Big, burly fenders with thick black flares cover massive 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler All Territory tires. Those body sides blend in nicely with an equally swollen hood that features a huge blacked-out air intake nostril at its leading edge and matte black gills on either side. A trio of government-mandated running lights sit inside the scoop, echoing the marker lights attached to ultra-wide dually pickups. Naturally, huge RAM scripting features front and rear, and there’s plenty more badging to make sure everyone knows this T-Rex sits at the top of the dino food chain.
More important than the muscular styling is what that bodywork encases, starting with a frame that Ram says shares just 25% with lesser 1500s. It’s designed to be stiff and durable enough to withstand off-road terrain at speeds of 100 mph. The TRX boasts 11.8 inches of ground clearance, and can ford water up to 32 inches deep. Bilstein Black Hawk e2 adaptive shocks with nitrogen-charged remote reservoirs continuously adjust to handle current demands, whether that means taking the edge off a bumpy road or absorbing much larger impacts, like when landing a jump. There's 13 inches of wheel travel up front and 14 inches out back, allowing for a huge amount of articulation.
All that heavy-duty equipment adds weight. Ram says the TRX gains about 600 pounds of burly mass in the transition from regular Hemi-powered 1500 to Beast Mode off-roader, leading to a truck that tips the scales at over 6,350 pounds. For perspective, a Ram Rebel 4x4 weighs a little less than 5,400 pounds and the Ford Raptor SuperCrew weighs less than 5,700.
Good thing about that massively powerful engine, then. By now you probably already know the headline-generating horsepower output, but what’s more important than numbers on a page is how 702 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque feel from behind the wheel. In a word: incredible.
We’ve spent countless hours in high-performance vehicles, on the road and off, at race tracks around the world and rugged trails cut through mountain ranges. But we’ve never experienced anything quite like the Ram TRX. Not only is the TRX quick on pavement with a claimed 0-60 time of 4.5 seconds, it’s impossibly fast on dirt, too. We tried the truck’s one-button-press launch control on all sorts of surfaces (why can’t every similar system be this easy to use?) and blasted off to ridiculous velocities each and every time with nothing more than a foot to the floor. As much as we enjoy a good blast to the speed limit on asphalt, it’s even more fun on looser surfaces like hard-pack dirt with all four wheels fighting for traction as they throw up grass and debris.
We took the TRX to a privately-owned piece of property and set up our own makeshift off-road course that wound in a clover-shaped pattern through saplings and big mounds of dirt to find out that the TRX’s Baja mode allows a perfect amount of slip to rotate the truck on low-traction surfaces. We then climbed those mounds to test out the limits of the suspension’s articulation. With the BorgWarner 48-13 active transfer case in 4WD Low, we climbed up with the slightest hint of throttle. After several hours in the dirt, we’re comfortable proclaiming that the TRX is the best and most capable factory off-road pickup truck in existence. Sorry, Raptor.
Perhaps even more importantly considering how much more time TRX owners will spend on pavement than off, Ram’s factory hot rodder is great to drive on-road, too. Those Bilstein shocks and their computer-controlled brain excel at filtering out bumps big and small, regardless of surface. The TRX defaults to Auto mode upon startup, and most buyers will leave it there. Sport mode stiffens up the shocks and steering, but the big 35-inch tires have more than enough sidewall pliability to keep the ride from ever becoming harsh. Sport mode also changes the eight-speed automatic transmission’s tuning to hold gears longer, which is totally unnecessary, so we suggest that owners play around with the Custom setting to dial in their preferences.