After decades hiding in the shadows of aftermarkets parts catalogs and one-off at-home builds, street trucks are so back. We’re talking lowered, sometimes force-fed pickups that can haul the toys and butt with aplomb, optimized for their primary environment: The street. Ford already offers the 700-horsepower FP700 package for V8-powered F-150s, several big tuners have had a crack at the latest half-tons, and now the Ram 1500 Direct Connection is here to dole out some racecar-towing Mopar muscle.
This Ram 1500 street truck is not an in-house vehicle, but it benefits from official distribution. See, it’s built by Fox Factory Vehicles and then sold through Mopar’s Direct Connection program. Considering the program’s previously let people buy full carbon fiber Dodge Charger bodies, Hellcat convertibles, and seven-liter Hellphant crate engines, a Ram 1500 street truck almost seems tame by those standards, and it’s probably the closest thing we’re getting to a spiritual Ram SRT-10 successor.
It all starts with a 5.7-liter Hemi V8-equipped crew cab Ram 1500, then slaps a Whipple supercharger on top and cranks up the output to 650 horsepower and 600 lb.-ft. of torque. From there, a three-inch drop courtesy of Ridetech coilovers gets the stance dialled in over a set of 22-inch wheels, a performance exhaust system brings the noise, and then Fox Factory Vehicles goes to town on the cosmetics.
We’re talking about a front splitter to visually lower the truck further, a rear spoiler, window tint, and all the trim pieces and graphics you can shake a stick at. Inside, this Ram 1500 can be optioned with black leather seats with gold stitching to match the exterior graphics, along with a special console badge and all-weather floor mats. Sure, it might be down on power compared to Ford’s 700-horsepower FP700 package for the F-150, but Ram and Fox Factory Vehicles seem to have cooked up a more cohesive street truck that touches on a little bit of everything just about equally.
Then again, this further treatment also commands a bigger price tag. The Fox Factory Vehicles Ram 1500 Direct Connection carries a price tag of $89,995 including freight, and that’s before you add four-wheel drive for an extra $4,045 and leather for an extra $1,085. Tick those boxes, and the Ram 1500 Direct Connection is knocking on the door of what Ram used to charge for the TRX in its final model year, and that 702-horsepower beast was an entirely different sort of phenomenon. It’s also hard to ignore that adding the $12,350 FP700 kit to a $58,115 Ford F-150 XLT crew cab with the five-liter V8, four-wheel-drive, and 3.73:1 axle ratio produces a substantially less expensive street truck. However, the Ram 1500 feels the most luxurious out of the current half-ton crop, and those graphics do look sweet. Plus, a three-year 36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty is nothing to sneeze at.
So, if you have money to burn, love a good street truck, and are Mopar-loyal, the Ram 1500 Direct Connection might be just the ticket for you. With 650 horsepower under the hood and proper suspension upgrades, it looks like a good time, and it can still tow 11,320 pounds. Did somebody say Section 179 deduction?
Top graphic image: Fox Factory Vehicles
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