2025 Ram 1500 Warlock Test: The Best Ram Truck for Your Buck?

MotorTrend

Whether you call it a dressed up Tradesmen or a Rebel-lite

Transcript

00:00This

00:29might not be the truck that you think it is. This is the Ram 1500 Warlock, and it's back

00:35with a new engine, some serious off-road hardware, and all of that at an incredible value.

00:58Now that we're inside the Warlock, you can tell that this is based on the Ram 1500 trades.

01:04It starts with cloth seats. You've got the dashboard from the old truck. You've got a

01:10smaller touch screen up here. It's not the screen that goes all the way down to the floor.

01:15Got a more basic steering wheel. There aren't as many soft touch surfaces as the other trucks,

01:20and I've got to reach all the way down here and actually slide my seat forward and back,

01:25and I can only adjust the tilt here. I can't raise the seat up, but those are the things

01:31that make the Warlock the Warlock, and it gets better. Truck fans should love this.

01:36You can sit three people across the front bench. Just fold this up. There's seat belts

01:42and everything. It's getting harder and harder to find trucks where you can do this.

01:47The biggest news for the Ram 1500 lineup is the powertrain. You used to be able to get

01:53this exact truck with a V8. That's not the story anymore. Now we have the 3-liter Hurricane

01:59twin-turbocharged in line six. This engine's found in everything from the top of the line

02:05down to the tradesman. So let's see how this puppy sounds.

02:16All right, getting into the throttle, and there's no hiding it. There is no V8 in this truck.

02:23Don't get that engine note, and you're probably going to miss that for just a little bit until

02:30you look at the numbers. So this inline six is putting out 420 horsepower, 469 feet of torque,

02:39and those numbers are up from the outgoing V8. We're also looking at better efficiency numbers,

02:45and the engine's lighter than the V8. So that translates into pretty darn good performance

02:51on the highway. A little bit longer between fuel stops, but we're doing about 25 miles an hour

02:58down a pretty bumpy road. We're not rock crawling. We're not desert racing.

03:03So this truck is right at home. We've got Bilstein shock absorbers in each corner,

03:10and they are smoothing out this road pretty well. We're hitting, I wouldn't say potholes,

03:18but some pretty good bumps here. Oh, this truck could go all day on this road. It's quiet in the

03:24cabin. My head's not getting snapped back and forth. This is comfortable. This is how a truck

03:29should ride on a bumpy road. Now let's steer this off into some bigger bumps here. We're

03:36turning off the gravel road onto some, whoa man, sorry. Okay, we're in some legitimate desert whoops

03:45here, and this is not where the truck is at home. You will very quickly find the limits of the

03:55suspension in the whoops. Like we're going maybe 20, and if I go, oh there we go. If I go two miles an

04:03hour faster than that, you will find the bump stops. So just because you can't bomb over the whoops at

04:0850 miles an hour in this truck, it doesn't make it any less capable, because this truck wasn't built

04:14to go into whoops. If that's what you want to do, we have the RHO for that, and the Warlock is not that.

04:21This truck is really good at exactly what it's supposed to do, and that's being a truck. Not being

04:27a race truck, not being a crazy rock crawler, just being a truck. What are the things that make a

04:34truck a truck? That's four-wheel drive. Warlock has four high, two high, four low, and even has that

04:41electronically locking rear differential that you can select with the push of a button. That's huge.

04:47On some trucks it does that for you, whether you like it or not. This one, selectable. That's big.

04:52What are we missing from the Rebel package? So this doesn't have four-wheel drive auto.

04:57That's totally fine. When's the last time you've used four-wheel drive auto?

05:01You've got four high, life is good. One of the important things we get from the Rebel package

05:07is the tires. The Goodyear tires on the Warlock are really good. So we're out here in the middle

05:15of the California desert, and this is a place where people drive to from all corners of the country.

05:21They'll load up their pickup trucks and their trailers full of toys and come out here to play

05:26in the dirt. So once you're out here, you can be driving on gravel roads, dirt roads, you can be

05:31crawling rocks, you can get up in the mountains and play in the snow and the mud, and you can even

05:37slay some dunes out here. And that's exactly what we've got right ahead of us. Let's see how the

05:43Warlock does in the sand. Okay, so we're cruising through the sand and Warlock lets you go into

05:54ultimate fun mode in the sand, which is two-wheel drive and a locked rear axle. So let's go here,

06:02two-wheel, axle locked, and here we go. No problem getting this thing sideways.

06:17We're doing this in our tow rig here.

06:19There's our sand donut. Oh, this is a blast. Two-wheel drive. Not even close to getting stuck.

06:34This is what I love about the selectable locking differential. This lets you party in the loose

06:40stuff, and it also helps you not get stuck when traction is low. You don't always need

06:47four-wheel drive to have a blast. There we go.

07:03All right, that was fun in the sand. There's still dust back there from the donuts.

07:08I think now we've got to slow this down a little bit and see how the Warlock handles

07:12crawling through the rocks. I can see the rocky trail right over here, and the Warlock has

07:21a lot of carryover features from the Rebel that make it super duper ready to crawl over some

07:29pretty gnarly rocks. Starting with the Goodyear tires, those are the Wrangler DuraTrax. That's a

07:36really aggressive tread pattern, and that can bite into the rocks and the snow and the dirt

07:40and the mud, but they're also really grippy in the rocks. Some of the better tires you can get

07:46on a stock truck. We've got four high and four low, and remember, this truck has that selectable

07:53locking rear differential, so you can push yourself up rocky trails with that locked rear

07:59axle. And we're not working with the most ground clearance out here. We only have 33-inch tall

08:05tires, so this truck is very capable on the trails, but we still have to be careful when we're

08:12picking our way through the rocks. And when we're in the rocks, we've also got skid plates underneath.

08:16We've got skids under the engine transfer case and a real metal skid underneath the entire fuel tank.

08:22Some people put plastic skid plates under there, and they call them skid plates. This is a legitimate

08:27steel skid plate. So there aren't many parts in this truck that you can't drag on a rock

08:33and not be safe. We're getting close to the hill here. I'm going to need four low for this one,

08:40so I've got to actually stop the truck, shift into neutral. We've got four low, it's shifting,

08:50and we've locked the rear axle. Okay, back into drive, and we're ready to rock here.

09:03So this is a one big feature of new trucks that we're missing on the Warlock. I'm not a big fan

09:09of lots of technology in trucks, but I've gotten spoiled with forward-facing cameras. That's one

09:15thing the Warlock doesn't have. It's got the backup camera, but not a camera that will let

09:20you see in front of the truck. So we're just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way here and

09:27look out the windshield. So we're still four low, everything's locked. We're going as slow

09:34as the truck will let us go. We're basically idling, and we're just going to let the

09:40Hurricane in line six and that locked rear axle push us right up this hill.

09:48So we've got a couple ruts here, some basketball-sized rocks. If I stay on my line,

09:56there we go. Okay, trying to stay steady on the throttle here and just let the tires dig.

10:04Now this is decently steep.

10:09All right, and it's doing really good. If you listen close, you can hear the tires just

10:16biting into the dirt. You can feel the suspension flexing when a tire gets up on the rock.

10:23Coming to the top of the hill here, that locked rear

10:28differential just pushed us up that entire hill. Now cresting the top of the hill, this is where

10:35I'd want that forward-facing camera to see what's right over top here, but we're doing fine.

10:42And that was a pretty steep one, and we made that without even a struggle. All right, so let's go

10:49see if it can do an even harder hill climb here. I've got the window down here for extra spotting

10:56capabilities, and let's crawl. We've got to pay close attention to that front bumper.

11:08All right, oh, we're using all four tires here.

11:11All right, the tires are gripping. As long as we don't slide and cave in the passenger door.

11:19Oh, I think we got it. Now, we don't have rock sliders here, so I've got to be extra careful right now.

11:30Struggled a little bit.

11:31All right, almost up and over, and we got it.

11:37The Warlock just continues to impress. That hill was fit for a Jeep, and we did it in the Warlock.

11:44Yeah, taking that off-road hardware from the Rebel. At the 33-inch tires, the Bilstein shocks,

11:53and all the skid plates, it's just a lot of fun.

11:56The 33-inch tires, the Bilstein shocks, and all the skid plates, if we do absolutely mess up and need to

12:04protect something underneath. This truck can do an impressive amount of crawling

12:09for what is essentially a tradesman.

12:16We really put the Warlock through its paces out here in the desert. We started out where

12:20the Warlock is the happiest, just cruising through the bumpy back roads, and then we turned it up a

12:25little bit, and really put those Bilstein shocks and the five-link suspension to work in the whoops.

12:30Maybe bumped into the bump stops a few times, nothing too crazy. Then, we really let that

12:35hurricane engine sing in the dunes. We shifted into two-wheel drive, locked that rear axle, and this

12:41truck sent sand flying up into space. A lot better than you'd expect for a half-ton truck. After that,

12:47we slowed it way down, and did a little bit of rock crawling, and we figured out just how far

12:52you could go with this truck, with the ground clearance and those 33-inch tires. So, we barely

12:58got into all the power the Warlock has on tap. You can option this truck with up to 1,980 pounds

13:05of payload, and it can tow over 11,000 pounds, and that's more than enough to get you and your toys

13:10way out there to have fun. So, trucks that can do all that, those dedicated off-road trucks like the

13:16Ford F-150 Tremor, Silverado Trail Boss, those start well into the $60,000 range, and only

13:22get more expensive when you add options. So, the Ram 1500 Rebel is one of those trucks. Now, you don't

13:29get Ram boxes, your touchscreen isn't three feet tall, and your seats aren't trimmed in crazy Italian

13:35leather. Whatever, this is a truck. Does your truck need all that stuff? The Warlock can do just about

13:42everything the Rebel and those other trucks can do, and it can do it for less money. The Warlock

13:47starts at just over $56,000, and I've been waiting this entire video to say this, that's a ton of truck

13:55for your buck.

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