To Sell Trucks, Break Out the Cowboys and Wrap Them in Old Glory

With fuel prices stubbornly high, it would seem a bad time to unleash new gas guzzlers. But Ram, Stellantis’s badge for brawny pickups, has introduced a line of muscle trucks, betting that most buyers are more concerned about their manliness than the price of gas.

It’s not a bad bet. At the risk of turning off some, Ram knows its buyers: American men (mostly) whose taste — reflected in ads — runs toward the Ultimate Fighting Championship, comely cowgirls on mechanical bulls, a Guns N’ Roses soundtrack and unapologetically large, loud trucks.

Ram loyalists fled when Stellantis, for the 2024 model year, phased out its Hemi V8 engine in its light-duty, full-size pickups, replacing it with the six-cylinder twin-turbo Hurricane I-6. The I-6 packed more horsepower than the Hemi and had better gas mileage with lower emissions, to boot.

But buyers rebelled. Ram’s market share plunged to 16.3 percent in 2025 from 20.4 percent in 2024, said Sam Fiorani, vice president for global vehicle forecasting at the automotive analyst AutoForecast Solutions. “Ram buyers like other people to know that they are driving a Ram truck, and the Hemi made a lot of noise,” he said. “And while the six is plenty loud, it’s not as loud as the Hemi,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/business/pickup-trucks-ads-ram-rumble-bee.html