Listen up Santa. That sleigh of yours might be getting a little past its sell-by date when it comes to getting all those gifts delivered by Christmas morning.
And while your team of reindeers, headed-up by that feisty red-nosed Rudolph, has done a stellar job since what, the 1800s, I feel they might be past their prime.
So how about something with 540 horseys, a big pick-up bed for a mountain of gifts, and the option of pulling a huge 8,380-pound Uhaul for the overflow?
Santa, meet the new Ram 1500 RHO Crew Cab 4×4.
This is Ram’s newest, high-performance off-road sport truck, and the milder, more-restrained successor to the dearly-departed, 702-hp Hellcat-powered Ram 1500 TRX bundle of insanity.
The headline news with the RHO is the new, twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder under the hood that Ram dubs the Hurricane.
No, it isn’t a patch on the crazy supercharged 6.2-liter V8 powering the TRX. But then again, not everyone wanted to wrangle 702 horseys and listen to a V8 that sounded like Bubba Wallace’s NASCAR racer.
Instead, the $73,340-and-up RHO delivers a still-Hurricane-force 540 horsepower and 521 pound-feet of torque, which is enough to catapult this bad-boy pick-up off the line and on to 60 mph in just 4.4 seconds.
That’s as rapid as the 400-hp twin-turbo Nissan Z sportscar I tested recently, and a second quicker to 60 than the RHO’s main rival, Ford’s F-150 Raptor.
And the beauty of the Hurricane versus Hellcat engines is weight. Compared the the TRX’s iron-block V8, the RHO’s aluminum-block inline-six is considerably lighter.
That allows the RHO to tow up to 8,380 pounds, which is 280 more than the TRX, which means a bigger trailer for Santa to haul his load of neatly-wrapped gifts.
See this new RHO heading south from the North Pole and it certainly looks the part of a tough truck. There’s a huge, air-gulping black grille, and a hood intake like Godzilla’s nostrils, complete with a trio of work-truck amber lights.
At each corner, blown-out fender flares cover towering 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory off-road tires. And in case you forget what you’re driving, there’s huge RHO badging on the hood and rear fenders.
As you’d expect, this new RHO is designed to play in the snow, sand, mud, or pretty much anything.
Standard equipment includes rugged Bilstein Black Hawk adaptive performance shocks, and suspension that allows 11.8 inches of ground clearance, plus 13 inches of front travel and 14 inches at the rear.
After a week of climbing in and out of our RHO tester however, I’d recommend investing the $1,195 in the available Mopar off-road running boards. Otherwise it’s a huge step-up into the cabin.
Talking of cabin, the interior quality and superior fit and finish that these latest Ram 1500s are famed for is only enhanced.
Black perforated leather seats are standard, with lovely contrasting white stitching. Nice, chunky, leather-wrapped wheel too with paddle shifters close by.
There’s a big 12-inch liquid crystal digital instrument display and 14.5-inch touchscreen in the center of the dash, plus an available 19-speaker Harman Kardon stereo.
The RHO is only available as a four-door crew cab (with a 5-foot 7-inch pick-up bed) so there’s no shortage of rear-seat legroom and headroom. Pay the $1,700 extra for the dual-pane glass roof and the cabin gets flooded with light.
So how does it drive? Pretty amazing for a tough-as-nails, off-road-focused sport truck.
While RAM lovers still put the V8 TRX up on a lofty pedestal, this RHO is pretty much just as fast, covering the 0-to-60 dash in only 0.6 seconds less. And it’s much quieter and more refined inside at speed, and rides with luxury sedan smoothness, even over lumpy asphalt. I love this truck.
Yes, it can still get pretty pricey when you start checking the options boxes – the Level 1 Equipment Group package alone costs an extra $10,000 but includes everything you’d ever want. The result is a price tag that can be close to $90,000.
Maybe worth sending a note to Santa to get one gift-wrapped and just in time for Christmas. Yo, Ho, Ho.
