See the historic hemi-engine and how it evolved
Chrysler’s first Hemi Engine dates back to 1951 and is currently enjoying revivals across the Stellantis lineup.
- During the 2025 model year, RAM stopped providing HEMI engines for 1500-class pickup trucks.
- Lam’s bossim Kuniskiss, who has left his job and has launched a top secret program to regain Hemi in the 2026 model year.
- RAM enlisted a team of engineers and employees who revived Hemi in just six months. This is far from the 18-month timeline that engineers faced first.
Stellantis makes cars, but in many cases the company’s inspiration comes from the battlefield.
Hellcat engine? It was named after Warplane. Hemi motor? The Chrysler Fighter Jet, inspired by the courage of World War II. Jeep Commander, gladiator, Renegade, Rubicon? Their nomenclature speaks for itself.
The company has one more thing to add to the lineage of war-flavored projects. A group of professional engineers, coded “F-15” in honor of one of the world’s fastest fighters since January, has revised their decision to ram the pickup truck and cancel the motor for the 2025 model model on a secret mission to reintroduce the legendary HemiV8 engine.
Marty Jagoda, one of such engineers on the F-15 project, said the process was “reminiscent of the way we did business years ago when (RAM) was taking the name by kicking the butt.”
From being on the shelves in 2024 to returning to the scene in the 2026 model year, Hemi has come to life on the truck this year thanks to a group of middle-aged With Kids.
“We made an error.”
Nick Cappa, head of RAM Communications, said that when asked why the brand killed Hemi for a mild truck in the first place, he left the tight flame closed and submitted that “it made an error and we fixed it quickly.”
In 2024, RAM launched an overhauled product lineup. Its lightweight pickup, which is in the 1500 class, does not have a Hemi V8 under the hood. For management, that change makes sense. The Hemi alternative is a turbocharged, inline six-cylinder engine called the Hurricane (still available for the 2026 model year) that can be stronger and more fuel efficient than the Hemi.
However, for some customers, the change from eight cylinders to six would have been a disaster, without the Hemi option.
When RAM resumed HEMI across its product lineup in June, RAM CEO Tim Kuniskis said it was the reason why hemi was revived, not by a sales number.
“(Buyers) hate the fact that we have taken away our freedom of choice,” Kuniskis said at a media event in June. “We as Americans, perhaps more truck buyers said, ‘This is the choice you get, and this is the engine you take.’ Whether it’s more power, more efficient or not, are you not taking away my choice? ”
Lamb was also aware of President Donald Trump’s reduction in emissions restrictions. So getting the engine back was one of Kuniskis’ first decisions after returning to work after a six-month “retirement”. The CEO left in June 2024 and returned in December of the same year. Later, he told Free Press, a part of the USA Today network, “I didn’t have to retire. I needed a break. I needed a break.”
Reviving Hemi for Ram’s light work truck became a top priority.
“So everyone was like, ‘Oh, what a goddamn, you’re going to bring Hemi back to things, it’s going to take three days,'” Kuniskis said as he unveiled the new Hemi in June.
“No,” he said.
The 3-day estimate was hilarious. Rethinking the engine that spent decades under the hood of a ram truck was not as simple as it sounds.
It took every six months to prepare for the following year model year, but according to Kuniskis, it would take a year and a half.
18 months? How about 6?
Kuniskis has built a dream team of engineers and designers to bring back the 2026 model year motors.
To lead the effort, he tapped Daryl Smith, a longtime Stellantis leader who previously oversaw the development of the company’s performance vehicle segment. Smith and Jagoda, who also came from the SRT lineage, were well versed in moving fast, whether they were close timelines or behind the Dodge Devil’s wheels, to bring the Hemi home.
Jagoda described the official title of the special project’s vice president as useful and inexplicable. In particular, in the Hemi Campaign, he and his companions, like the Lamb Engineer Dance Tagner, were able to wrap and leave the newly revived Hemi covered and pull it apart.
Jagoda, the charming storyteller with pointy hair, and Stagner, a clean cut brain trust of everything, laid out how they pulled away from the mission for the free press.
Jagoda said the motto was to exhaust all the measures. Make that extra call, work another hour, do it all, and get your vehicle ready to launch in early summer.
According to Jagoda, the project was green light in December. He said he was receiving a backup call and text from a colleague on Christmas Eve.
The F-15 team held several preliminary meetings on New Year’s Day, “it was supposed to be 15-20, maybe 30 minutes.” “They went for two and a half hours.”
Stellantis never stopped production of the HEMI engine. This was still available in the heavy-duty segments of Dodge Durango and Ram. So we’re just going to increase production and drop the engine into a new body, right?
It’s not that fast. literally.
According to Stagner, the problem was that new electronics made the process more complicated.
When Lam bids Adieu to Hemi in 2025, the brand updated most of the truck’s electronic construction. Stagner said more than 12 “nodes” have been developed for the Ram Track, improving the security and bandwidth of the vehicle’s electrical components.
As Stagner says, new electronics must communicate with the engine. As simple as telling the engine to stop when the brakes drop, it brought a challenge.
“We had to let Hemi talk to the new electronics,” Stagner said. The new electronics never “speak” Hemi, and Hemi did not speak the language of the new technology.
“It was very intense,” Jagoda recalled recently at the Chrysler Certified Celebration site in Chelsea, whipping other journalists with new trucks. “Sometimes, it’s literally eight hours, ten hours on a computer, a meeting on a computer, a meeting on a phone (all at the same time), and again, it means making sure you haven’t missed anything.”
There’s no ice, he won’t say
The project began in January. By mid-February, the F-15 team had a working hemi-driven ram track. But that was just the beginning.
The crew still had to overcome another important obstacle. To bring your car to the market, you will need to test it on a variety of road conditions, including ice, snow, and rain.
But by late February, they had gotten a burner as RAM was preparing to test it in winter conditions at a facility in Raco, a town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so they got their hands on the burner,” Jagoda said.
An unusually warm February series – Weather Archives show warmer highs than the frozen heights in a 5-day stretch at nearby Sault Cent. Marie US Weather Station – A truck at the Smithers Winter Test Center was melting ice and snow.
The F-15 had a track to test, but there was no place to test it.
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Tests were also approaching. It was scheduled to be completed in July in New Zealand, the 2026 model year truck. RAM had to test the vehicle locally and make everything perfect. Before that, everything had to be perfected before shipping to far-reaching destinations, where the Western Hemisphere enjoys summer and provides winter conditions at the same time.
It will take five weeks to ship a bundle of halfton trucks to New Zealand. It was a precious little time. Considering that it took me 10 weeks to get back there.
But that was the first thing that happened to the team. Complete the cold climate challenges in Michigan.
“Mother Nature threw bones at us,” Jagoda said with a deep breath. “The first week of March, that changed…it’s cold again.”
The problem was that the North Upper Test Centre was closed – the season was closed.
“We had to do that, right? So we made the extra call,” Jagoda said. “They gave us the keys to the building. … Without that extra call, we wouldn’t be here.”
According to Jagoda, the owners of the test facility were given F-15 access, allowing the team to complete local testing and development, complete communication between the engine and brakes, and ship “fully representative, ready-to-mount” trucks to New Zealand in July for federal verification testing.
The “One Night Reconnaissance Mission” started small, but needed others to carry it out
According to Jagoda, the F-15 program began as a “top secret” program known to small groups that grew in size as the demand for convenience became apparent.
“We need stakeholders from all of us. We had to buy to get the parts back. We needed engineers to build the truck.
Joe Smith, who works at Shap in the Product Launch program, was one of a team of workers who looped into a quiet campaign to build the first pilot vehicle of the 2026 RAM 1500s.
“We’ve been building that truck for years,” said Smith, a member of the UAW Local 1700. Shap workers have built over 2 million RAM 1,500 since the products were first brought to the factory in 2018.
“We’ve got some of the best people building trucks here at 1700 or SHAP,” Smith said. For him and his team, making a hemi-powered truck is “like riding a bike for these guys and some of the gals.”
When Smith and about 50 of his colleagues were first explained about the project in January, “It was really hard to keep everyone quiet,” Smith said. “We hated seeing the car go because it was so good for us over the years. It was a relief that came back.”
According to RAM, customers were relieved too. RAM reported that 24 hours after it began ordering for the 2026 hemi-driven 1500s, the company saw more than 10,000 people.
Myles Strong, SHAP’s manufacturing chief engineer, said the facility was “full speed” for the production of new hemis to meet demand. Strong oversaw the reintroduction of Hemi and was pleased to report that the factory was smoothly adjusted to meet the demands of new work.
Better than smooth sailing, Strong is the feeling he gets when he hears the hemming.
“For the first time I was passing by and I just heard it boot up and I knew I was groaning and literally got goosebumps,” Strong said. “That’s because we realised what it means to us, what it means to the plants and what it means to the company.”
Smith and Strong were sensitive to secrets before others, but a full confirmation of Hemi’s comeback didn’t come until early June, when the F-15 was putting the finishing touches on 2026 Hemi-powered RAM before taking it to the first open road.
As Jagoda says, the F-15 ran a “overnight reconnaissance mission” at 5am and got the truck – from Shap to Chrysler HQ to preview the new trucks of the media, undoubtedly humming with the Hemi exhaust sound. They drove them out of the “tunnels and caves” in the early morning. At the same time, it was during the shift change in Shap. As new trucks unfolded, they were walking through the workforce.
They knew what they were seeing right away.
“Their hands were in the air… They said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s real,’ and added that he remembers the workers who were screaming, hearing Hemi complaining with a V8 badge stuck on the fender.
“My hair is standing up in my hands. “It was a moment for the people who make trucks. It was a moment that we felt in our company.”
Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and UAW from Detroit Free Press. Please contact him: lrappleye@freepress.com.
