The Bee Returns… To Lose
Ram has brought back its Rumble Bee sport truck for the 2027 model year, this time as a trio of V8-powered vehicles ranging from 395 to 777 horsepower. There hasn’t been a production Rumble Bee since 2005, not counting a concept truck in 2013, and so this is a pretty big deal. Aside from the TRX, which also makes its return this year, buyers haven’t been able to get a 6.2-liter Hellcat engine in any other Ram models.
|
Model |
Engine |
Horsepower/Torque |
|
Rumble Bee |
5.7-liter HEMI V8 |
395 hp / 410 lb-ft |
|
Rumble Bee 392 |
6.4-liter HEMI V8 |
470 hp / 455 lb-ft |
|
Rumble Bee SRT |
6.2-liter Supercharged V8 |
777 hp / 680 lb-ft |
|
Ram 1500 |
3.0-liter Twin-Turbo I6 SO |
420 hp / 469 lb-ft |
|
Ram 1500 RHO |
3.0-liter Twin-Turbo I6 HO |
540 hp / 521 lb-ft |
The Rumble Bee 392 is also the first Ram 1500 to offer the 6.4-liter V8 HEMI with 470 hp, an engine that was previously locked to the Ram 2500. Despite having three potent V8 engines, two of them will likely be slower (to 60 mph) than comparable Ram trucks with the Hurricane twin-turbo inline-six engine based on available data.
The Hurricane Rocks
2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee SRT Ram
Ram has already quoted 0-60 times for all three versions of the Rumble Bee, which we can compare to acceleration runs that we’ve clocked in the real world with various Ram trucks. Here is how the new Bees would stack up:
- 2026 Ram 1500 Limited (V8): 6.39 seconds
- 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee: 6.1 seconds
- 2025 Ram 1500 Big Horn Standard Output: 5.2 seconds
- 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee 392: 5.2 seconds
- 2025 Ram 1500 Tungsten High Output: 4.7 seconds
- 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee SRT: 3.4 seconds
The supercharged, Hellcat-powered Rumble Bee SRT would leave the other trucks in the dust with a burst of whining blower-assisted acceleration. However, it’s not any quicker than the revived Ram TRX, which also has a manufacturer-estimated 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds.
As for the other Bees, the newly added 6.4-liter 392 model would fail to out-accelerate the High Output Hurricane model, and only match the Standard Output inline-six. The 5.7-liter model is a bit quicker than the luxury Limited model we drove last year, but only by a few tenths of a second; it’s also about a second slower than the Hurricane. Ram knows its customers wanted the best-sounding trucks with V8 engines, but if you want the quickest truck (that doesn’t cost six figures), you should buy one with a six cylinder engine.
