Ram brings back V-8 Hemi as sales rise 22% against industry decline

GM expands V-8 output, Ford adds F-150 V-8 trims as demand holds

GM expands V-8 output, Ford adds F-150 V-8 trims as demand holds.

One year after pulling the V-8 Hemi from its Ram pickup lineup in favor of a smaller turbocharged six-cylinder, Stellantis has brought the engine back. The reversal is paying off: Ram sales are up 22% this year against a 3% decline across the industry.

The about-face came under chief executive Antonio Filosa, who took over in 2025 and made resurrecting the Hemi one of his first decisions. Filosa said the move reflected a fuller understanding of what his customers care about, citing company data showing about 40% of Ram 1500 buyers pay a premium for the V-8. “The engine is not only efficiency and horsepower,” Filosa said. “It’s also emotions.”

The Hemi revival runs against more than a decade of industry pressure to shift toward smaller, turbocharged engines and electrification. Large pickups remain uniquely popular in the U.S.: automakers sold nearly 2.4 million of them in 2025, close to the 2.8 million cars sold across all categories, according to Motor Intelligence data. Three of the five bestselling vehicle lines last year were trucks — Ford’s F-Series, General Motors’ Chevrolet Silverado and Stellantis’ Ram — and customer loyalty in the segment runs deep. Engine performance and mystique are central to how automakers compete for that loyalty.

Stellantis and its rivals are now repositioning around that reality. General Motors is expanding V-8 production by scrapping a prior plan to manufacture EV motors at a plant in western New York. Ford plans to offer V-8s on more F-150 trims in 2027. Both moves come as President Trump’s administration rolls back fuel-economy rules and greenhouse-gas standards that once pushed car engines to get smaller.

Customer reactions captured the depth of attachment to the V-8. Brian Ewart, a 39-year-old Kansas resident and Navy veteran, recently paid $80,000 for a Ram with the V-8. “It just sounds like what a truck should sound like,” he said. Ewart said he didn’t see the newer inline-six as reliable and robust for towing as the older engine. Mark Boniol, owner of Mark Dodge in Lake Charles, La., said the Hurricane’s tone drew similar complaints. “It was so high-pitched, it sounded like you were driving a Honda,” he said. Boniol sold a Ram to John Reed, a 55-year-old IT worker in suburban Atlanta who had been ready to spend $60,000 on a new truck last year but waited for the V-8 and paid a $1,200 premium for it. Boniol said Ram has since made tweaks to improve the Hurricane’s tone.

The Hurricane had been announced by Stellantis in 2023 as the exclusive engine for its light-duty Ram trucks, the models most commonly bought by everyday customers. On paper, the Hurricane was more powerful, produced more torque, towed more, used less fuel and ran smoother and quieter than the V-8. Those qualities proved a major problem with the buyers Ram was targeting. Tim Kuniskis, a Stellantis veteran who leads North American brands, compared the experience to music. A turbocharged engine like the Hurricane, he said, sounds “smooth and linear” — like “classical music.” A V-8, he said, “is rock and roll.”

The Hemi name itself dates to the 1950s, when Chrysler introduced V-8s with hemispherical combustion chambers; the engine became a stock-car and drag-racing legend through the 1960s and 70s before being phased out around the oil crisis and revived in an updated form in the early 2000s.

There is precedent for the skepticism smaller, turbocharged engines have faced. Ford’s “EcoBoost” twin-turbocharged V-6, introduced in the F-150 in 2010, met the same customer doubts about durability. Ford put the EcoBoost through a torture test simulating 160,000 miles and over 10 years of use, then tore it down publicly at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show to prove its durability. The F-Series remains America’s top-selling vehicle. GM’s “Small Block” V-8, with a lineage also dating to the 1950s, has comparable cachet; a sixth-generation Small Block is due in 2027 trucks.

The Stellantis decision to drop the Hemi from light-duty Ram trucks was made on June 15, 2021 — the date anchored an all-black strategy presentation Filosa reviewed after taking over. Filosa also studied data showing roughly 40% of truck buyers had written off the brand because it didn’t offer a V-8. “The engine is not only efficiency and horsepower. It’s also emotions,” he said.

Industry consultant Dan Nicholson, a former General Motors vice president, said most car buyers don’t focus on cylinder count. “It’s only in full-size pickups that it’s controversial,” he said. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram have long been industry laggards in fuel economy, making up for it by paying billions of dollars in fines to the U.S. government and buying regulatory credits from electric-vehicle makers like Tesla. When those brands merged with Europe’s PSA Group in 2021 to form Stellantis, chief executive Carlos Tavares sought to end the reliance on regulatory credits by pushing electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. After Stellantis moved light-duty Rams exclusively to the Hurricane, its U.S. market share plunged, especially as dealers said the company kept prices high. Under pressure from shareholders, U.S. dealers and the United Auto Workers, Tavares left the company at the end of 2024. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Filosa convened strategy meetings at Stellantis’s U.S. headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., after taking over. Kuniskis said Stellantis lost its way not in developing the Hurricane but in trying to ditch the Hemi entirely; Ford and GM, by contrast, each continued to offer V-8s in their pickups even as they introduced smaller, more powerful engines. In May, at a company proving ground in Michigan, Kuniskis unveiled a new line of “muscle trucks,” all powered by Hemis and carrying what Ram called a “Symbol of Protest” badge featuring a charging ram’s head emerging from the front of a Hemi engine block. Showing off one truck, Kuniskis pumped his fist and revved the engine before a crowd of enthusiasts and content creators, who goaded him to spin the truck’s wheels in place until rubber turned to smoke. “We just built this truck,” Kuniskis said. “I’m not gonna blow it up.”

How long Stellantis can sustain the Hemi revival remains an open question. Fuel-economy regulations could snap back under a different president and Congress, and even Stellantis executives expect rules to ratchet up in coming years regardless of political leadership. The company is not done with electrification, even as its current crop of EVs failed to find an audience and led to a $26 billion write-down — the largest write-down among U.S. automakers. This year Stellantis plans to introduce a range-extended EV with an onboard gas generator, starting with Jeep’s Grand Wagoneer SUV and later offered on Ram trucks. The company is also planning a second Jeep EV despite the first one’s poor reception. “They’re not going to be huge volumes,” Kuniskis said of the EVs. “But every one of those is a significant enabler to sell more Hemis.”