Ram Just Taught Ford How To Build A Proper Street Truck

The Ford F-150 Lobo is one of the coolest-looking trucks we’ve seen in years. Especially in black. With the sleek horizontal lightbar and the dual exhaust, the design team gives the rig a handsome look. But under the hood, it’s largely the same truck as a standard Ford F-150, with little that makes it a “street truck” beyond the fact that Ford dropped the suspension by a couple of inches.

Now, the upcoming Ram 1500 Rumble Bee? There’s a street truck. Especially the 700+ horsepower SRT model, with a supercharged Hemi to challenge anything and everything on the road. There’s plenty to like about the Lobo, but, when it comes to performance specs, Ford seems to have brought a butter knife to a bazooka fight.

The Rumble Bee Is A Real Street Truck

There’s more to building a street truck than just bumping up the numbers. But you expect at least a few extra horses over an entry-level pickup. With just 400 horsepower to offer and zero to 60 times in the 6.0-second range, the 5.0-liter V8-powered F-150 Lobo is a solid performer, but it doesn’t quite deliver on the big promises made by its imposing exterior as the Rumble Bee does.

At the base level, the standard Rumble Bee produces 395 hp, which is pretty good, but on par with any full-size pickup you see at the job site. Start working your way up the trim list, though, and you’re venturing deeper and deeper into supercar territory largely uncharted by pickups. The Rumble Bee 392 creeps up toward 500 horsepower, and the SRT blows right past that number, with 777 hp on tap.

To get this kind of performance out of a Ford F-150, without taking it to a tuner, you would need to grab a Raptor R, which doesn’t really compare to the Rumble Bee, since it’s an off-roader, not a street truck, and you’ll still come up 57 horses short of the SRT.

The SRT Delivers “Unnecessary” Power

​​​​​​Ram’s head of American brands, Tim Kuniskis, explains in the short promotional film “Muscle Runs Deep” that street trucks are widely regarded as unnecessary, but “since that describes so many products that captivated enthusiasts’ hearts,” Ram is going all in.

We’re in total agreement. If it ain’t frivolous, it ain’t fun. The whole Rumble Bee lineup is exciting, but the SRT is the one that really sparks joy. In the press release, Stellantis boasts that the SRT is the “most powerful, quickest and fastest V8-powered production pickup ever.”

In addition to one of the heftiest engines we’ve ever seen in a production truck, the SRT benefits from several performance-oriented features across the whole Rumble Bee lineup. These include a cool flat-bottom performance steering wheel with console shifter and paddle shifters, full-time active four-wheel drive, and a TorqueFlite eight-speed automatic transmission.

The base Rumble Bee packs a 5.7-liter Hemi, and that one’s coming out in late 2026. The Rumble Bee 392, launching in early 2027 with the SRT, runs on a 6.4-liter Hemi V8 and marks a first for the brand, as the Ram 1500 has never been offered with a 392-cubic-inch V8 before.

It’s not just about raw power. To improve handling, the Rumble Bee and the 392 use steel suspension with longer arms than on a standard Ram 1500, with Bilstein monotube performance shocks and sway-limiting stabilizer bars. The 392 with the Track Pack and the SRT both feature a performance-oriented air suspension setup, and every model offers a range of driving modes for every condition, with the 392 and the SRT both featuring a Track mode.

All That And Looks, Too

Credit: Ram

The Ford F-150 Lobo sells itself primarily on being handsome. We think the Rumble Bee could get away with the same sales tactic, with or without an impressive engine lineup under the hood. Every inch of the Ram has been tweaked, painted, or decaled to set the Rumble Bees apart from the everyday version of the truck. Take a look under the hood, and the engine block is painted jet black. How cool is that?

The Rumble Bee and the Rumble Bee 392 feature an aggressive front grille with LED lighting in the front and back, and widebody fenders. We dig that Detonator Yellow, but the Molten Red and Ceramic Gray are attractive, too.

The mirrors have been shrunk for aerodynamics, so you don’t have that big-ears look you see on some Rams. The truck is covered with functional features like a deep chin splitter, a rear spoiler, and air intakes, contributing to a look that Ram calls “unapologetically evil, menacing, and purposeful in their appearance.” And yeah, it really does look like something a bad guy would drive in a Fast & Furious film.

Credit: Ram

The Kill Bill-esque black-on-yellow look is unique to the SRT, with the blacktop exterior paint package covering the hood and roof in Diamond Black Crystal Pearl-Coat. You can pair this with the gray and red paint options, but why would you, when it looks so slick with the yellow?

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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.