When the 2025 Ram 1500 RHO begins reaching owners and those drives begin hitting their local off-road parks, there is a good chance that this new off-road truck will prove to be better than the TRX in many off-road situations. Many of us hate the fact that the Hemi V8 engines are being legislated out of production vehicles, but if we set aside our love of the V8 roar for just a second, it makes sense that the RHO – with less power but also less weight over the front end – could be more capable in off-road scenarios which don’t require gobs of low-end acceleration.
The 2025 Ram 1500 RHO has less horsepower and torque than the TRX, which leads to slower acceleration numbers, but the RHO has less weight in the engine bay. Aside from the obvious advantage of a lower curb weight, the RHO also has a more balanced front-to-rear weight ratio, which can make it easier to keep the nose up in deep mud/water or when flying through the air. Less weight over the front end can make it easier to climb over obstacles on the trail, but less weight over the front axle can also lead to decreased wear-and-tear during in harsh conditions.
Over the course of the past decade, I have had the pleasure of off-road testing a great many vehicles from Ram and Jeep, along with models from Land Rover, Ford, Toyota and General Motors. When testing the TRX, we spent some (exhilarating) time on an off-road race course where we were accelerating hard and reaching high speeds, but the vast majority of off-road testing takes place at ORV parks or on prepared off-road trails. In many of these off-road test sessions, we spend lots of time in 4-low, so we are rarely going over 25 miles per hour. Sure, there are some short sprints in many off-road test areas where we can experience some low-end acceleration and throw some mud, but when we are crawling over rocks, digging through deep mud or winding along a tight, wooded trail, we are moving carefully, at relatively low speeds.
In common off-roading situations like those in which we test new trucks and SUVs, there are very few situations where having 702 horsepower will provide a gigantic advantage over a similar truck with 540 horsepower. However, the advantage in front end weight coupled with the advantages in approach and departure angles will come in handy during most intricate off-road situations. In every situation where clearance and climbing abilities are more important than low-end acceleration numbers, the 2025 Ram 1500 RHO will have an advantage over the TRX. That advantage will be hard to measure or really quantify, but when talking about two trucks with similar chassis and suspension components – the one with less front end weight is going to shine brighter in situations where big speed and hard acceleration don’t come into play.
