It’s not every day a high-performance truck tries to grow up a little, but that’s exactly what the Ram 1500 RHO is attempting. This isn’t just a stopgap to fill the TRX’s tire tracks, it’s a signal from Ram that a new era has begun, one with fewer V8s and more turbocharged sixes.

Stellantis may be stepping away from the Hellcat phase (for now, at least), but it hasn’t lost its taste for over-the-top machines. A future TRX revival has been rumored, though, so the V8 story may not be entirely over. In the meantime, the RHO stakes its claim with a very different kind of muscle.

While the TRX did everything it could to be a true king of the performance pickup world, the RHO seems a little more like a sophisticated hunter. It’s a bit smarter, leaner, and arguably better in almost everything while remaining tough as nails.

Quick Facts

To find out if everything we’ve heard about it is actually true, we grabbed the keys to a Ram RHO and treated it like our only car for a week. We tested it over hundreds of miles that included highway, city, off-road, and gravel roads. In the end, we discovered that Ram did, indeed, pick the right name for this truck.

A TRX’s Spitting Image

Photos Stephen Rivers for Carscoops

Right off the top, it’s worth noting that , throughout our week with it, several people asked if it was a TRX. One might think that Arkansans would be up on such things and that the large RHO lettering would give it away, but here’s the thing: this truck looks almost identical in every way to the TRX.

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The face is largely similar. The hood has the same ram-air-style scoop in the middle and a pair of heat extractors on each side of it. There are small air intakes next to each headlight. The front fenders have pressure-relief vents on each side. The rear fenders are equally bulbous, the fuel door is in the same exact spot, and the plastic wheel arches are identical, too.

In the rear, you’ll find the same style dual-exhaust poking out of the back and more vents bookending the taillights. These are all features found on both trucks, so it’s no wonder that people get confused. Roll around in an RHO and you’ll find out people will, more often than not, think you’re driving a TRX.

Either way, this truck has presence in spades. Of course, anything that’s this large is going to have presence even if it’s ugly or overcompensating.  That said, it’s worth noting that this size has at least one major drawback: you simply have to get used to washing this thing by yourself because it does not fit in the vast majority of drive-through car washes.

 I kid you not when I say I took it to not one, not two, but seven different places just to find one where I wouldn’t have to physically get out and clean it on my own. I don’t mind washing any vehicle, but when it didn’t fit in the first two places, it became a journalistic inquiry to see if any car wash could accept it.

The Hemi’s Dead, Long Live The Hurricane

Those vents on the hood aren’t fake. They help feed air and remove heat from the RHO’s twin-turbo inline six. It’s the same engine found in several other Ram 1500 trims, and we’ve driven it before in the Tungsten. We liked it in that truck, and so we expected more of the same here.

The engine features low-inertia turbochargers, a deep-skirt cast-aluminum block, a forged steel crankshaft, forged steel connecting rods, and cross-bolted steel main bearing caps to pump out up to 540 horsepower (403 kW) and 521 lb-ft (706 Nm) of torque. That’s considerably more than is on offer in Ford’s base Raptor that makes 450 horsepower (335 kW) and 500 lb-ft (677 Nm) of torque.

Notably, this isn’t a performance truck with little ability to do real work. It’ll still tow up to 8,380 lbs (3,801 kg) and has a maximum payload of 1,520 lbs (689 kg).

A High-End Cabin In A Utility Truck

Photos Stephen Rivers for Carscoops

Ram has led the way in terms of cabin comfort for some time now, and the RHO is no exception. It doesn’t have every single amenity that the Tungsten did, but option it high enough and it’s not far off. Our test car had an MSRP of $89,995. For that, you get eight-way power-adjustable front seats with heating, ventilation, and a massaging function, as well as heated second-row seats. All four offer excellent head and legroom, along with good cushioning and support.

The truck also includes a hands-free driving assistance system, a steering wheel with genuine leather and carbon fiber, and a heads-up display. All of that makes this off-road desert-runner of a truck feel more luxurious than one might expect. A 14.4-inch infotainment system sits proudly in portrait orientation and works well thanks to a quick and responsive Uconnect 4 interface.

In addition, the front seat passenger has access to their very own infotainment system in the dash. That might sound like a gimmick, but it’s seriously helpful since passengers have full access to pair phones, input directions, search for locations, and more while in motion.

Saddling A Rhino

Trying to control a beast of this size, weight, and power doesn’t sound like an easy thing to do. The RHO might be more refined and less powerful than the TRX it replaced, yet it feels like every bit of the handful of the old Hellcat-powered pickup. No, it’s not as fast, but anyone who’s comparing the two is missing the point.

The RHO drives like the animal that it is. The wide frame and huge tires feel large and in charge on public roads. The seating position is high and commanding. The ride is comfortable and great for long cruises on the highway. Does it feel a bit more like a boat (or maybe an actual rhinoceros) than I’d like? Absolutely. Is it tough to use in a tightly packed parking lot? You bet it is. There’s a tradeoff for that, though, that we’ll circle back to shortly.

In most scenarios on the road, the RHO feels very big. The 540-hp Hurricane inline-six is more than punchy enough to carry the load, though. Zipping in and out of traffic comes down to whether you’ll have the physical space rather than the power and handling. Ram says it’ll do 0-60 mph in 4.6 seconds, and while we could only manage a best time of 4.8 seconds, better conditions might have allowed us to match it.

Read: Ram Confirms 25 New Models In 18 Months And It Starts With A Bang In June

The steering is articulate but short of what we’d consider sharp. It’s great to see Stellantis incorporating a new paddle shifter design too. In previous years, the paddle was only on the upper half of the steering wheel. Now, it’s on both the top and bottom and leaves a small space in the middle for media controls. Personally, I’d love to see it have a full paddle and just leave the audio controls where they are. Nobody wants to miss a shift and change their radio station while bombing around a high-speed off-road course. Even so, it’s a small nitpick in what is otherwise a very agreeable driving experience.

However, the RHO truly shines when you leave the tarmac. That shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone, but I found myself intentionally looking for places to drive that didn’t have an ounce of pavement anywhere close. The suspension is perfectly tuned for gravel, sand, or even some light rock crawling. That might be the best part of the RHO: its ability to do just about everything at a reasonably high level.

In high-speed off-road scenarios, the steering and Bilstein active terrain dampers team up to provide excellent feedback and control. On low-speed trails, the 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory All-Terrain tires and 30.2° approach angle make for easy days.

As for fuel economy, Ram says the RHO will get up to 15 mpg. That’s one mile per gallon more than the TRX, but we didn’t see it in our testing. We managed, at best, 11.9 in a combination of city and highway driving. If there’s anything else to complain about, it’s the noise on offer here. There’s just no way to make this inline-six sound anywhere near as appealing as a roaring V8. Hey, maybe they’ll bring back the Hemi soon. Not likely, but one can always hope…

Comparisons

TRX. Those three letters and the legacy they’ve made for Ram, Dodge, and Mopar fans has sort of undercut the RHO even before it was born. The TRX was so wild, so ludicrously powerful, and frankly, a bit silly, that the RHO wasn’t going to be able to get out of its shadow. In reality, while the two are obviously related, they’re different animals altogether by nature.

The TRX was meant to be a Raptor killer in every way. That’s why Ram was cheeky enough to put a Jurassic Park-style Tyrannosaurus holding a dead raptor in its mouth under the hood of every unit. The RHO is, ironically, also meant to kill the Raptor, but it stops well short of having any chance of challenging the V8-powered Raptor R.

To that end, it’s a more raucous Raptor in just about every sense of the word. It looks meaner, it’s faster, and it’s more spacious and practical too. No, it’s not as sharp on public roads as a Raptor, but that’s not what either of these trucks is meant to excel at anyway.

That said, it’s worth noting that Ford lets Raptor customers put the truck in rear-wheel drive only mode. Ram should do the same because it would make it as playful as its main rival, if not more.

Unless money’s not an issue, though, you’re probably be willing to let that one go because of one significant factor: pricing. The Raptor starts at $81,695 after destination, delivery, and an acquisition fee. The RHO starts at $71,090 after delivery and destination, which makes the more powerful and faster Ram 14 percent cheaper. Which means that, if you’re not a die-hard Ford fan, it’s nigh impossible to justify paying extra for the Raptor.

Final Thoughts

The RHO doesn’t out-crazy the TRX, whose shadow still towers over it in some aspects, but that’s perfectly fine. The new truck offers most of its predecessor’s performance while being more livable, more balanced, and arguably better-suited to the real world.

The best part is that, V8 aside, it retains all the same qualities. It’s a riot off-road, still feels like a rolling flex on pavement, and pulls harder than just about anything else in this class. But it also rides better, drives more comfortably, and starts around $10k cheaper than its main rival.

Ram didn’t try to top its past with the RHO. It simply moved on, keeping up with the times. And in doing so, it might have just built the best all-around high-performance truck currently on sale in America.

Photos Stephen Rivers for Carscoops