Two pieces of good news came out of Trenton Engine recently, even as Stellantis temporarily closed the plant due to an oversupply of V6 engines. Industry insiders noted that running a plant seven days a week at full tilt, only to close it because of overproduction, is not unusual—it’s been industry practice across many automakers even when American Motors was still around.
First, Trenton has already started building advanced “PUG” (Pentastar Upgrade) V6 engines for the 2025 Ram 1500. This is a more efficient version of the original Pentastar; it costs more but provides more flexibility in valve timing and lift, cooled EGR, and other features which increase power and fuel economy.
Second, the plant is scheduled to add a new PUG V6 for the updated Jeep Grand Cherokee in October. These updates are noticeably coming to Trenton rather than to the Mexican plant which also makes V6 engines.
While the company has consolidated engine production to just one of the two buildings in the Trenton complex, it is quite a large building with a high capacity, and adding these two variants suggests that the complex and the Pentastar V6 itself has some runtime left over the next few years.
Stellantis did not have any comments for this report.

David Zatz started what was to become the world’s biggest, most comprehensive Mopar site in 1994 as he pursued a career in organizational research and change. After a chemo-induced break, during which he wrote car books covering Vipers, minivans, and Jeeps, he returned with Patrick Rall to create StellPower.com for daily news, and to set up MoTales for mo’ tales.
David Zatz has around 30 years of experience in covering Chrysler/Mopar news and history, and most recently wrote Century of Chrysler, a 100-year retrospective on the Chrysler marque.
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