TG's US Person of the Year loves flying trucks, hyper-muscle cars and big ol’ V8s

In his role as Head of American Brands for Stellantis, Tim Kuniskis has the fate of age-old US automotive totems Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep in his hands. But he’s also CEO of Ram, the truck division that underpins the entire operation. Americans love trucks, we know, almost as much as Kuniskis does. 

But he also loves horsepower, and in the Ram 1500 TRX SRT the muscle truck reaches a new and borderline ludicrous zenith. You want 777bhp? You got it. And if you want a CEO with the personality and attitude to match, you got that, too. We’ve awarded him our Person of the Year trophy… and you’re about to find out why. 

Top Gear: You recently admitted to being ‘tragically American’.

Tim Kuniskis: I can’t take credit for that. Some journalist said that about me and I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. [laughs] But I love this country, I love the freedoms it gives us to do the things we do. 

TG: You returned to run the company after a seven-month retirement. Did golf and gardening not suit you?

TK: I probably didn’t need to retire. I probably just needed a vacation, I was a little burnt out. Six days into my retirement, I woke up and thought, “oh s***, what did I do?” So when the opportunity came to return I jumped at it. I looked in the mirror and thought, “did I fight hard enough for what I believed in?’ If you can’t answer yes to that then you have unfinished business. That’s why as soon as I came back I said, “we’re bringing Hemi back, we’re going back to NASCAR, we’re adding SRT, we’re bringing TRX back.” 

TG: But no Viper?

TK: I have a very strong love/hate relationship with that car. I love the car itself. The funny thing is that everyone loved the Viper but no-one bought it. Of course, a car like that is a halo product, it can do great things for the brand. But I think the Viper has run its course. We’re in a world of Chinese cars that are boats and Teslas that can fly. It’s a big tech flex.

What I believe in, more than ever, is a hyper muscle car. Not a hypercar, not a muscle car, but a new thing, in a space that doesn’t exist today. I want us to do something that will age well, something timeless. Some of the stuff you see today is not future-proofed. It’s tech for tech’s sake. 

TG: Did you have as much fun developing the Ram 1500 TRX as we did driving it?

TK: It was frustrating and fun at the same time. Our goal from day one was to be able to jump it without hurting it, and that’s not an easy thing to do. So that truck has a very bespoke frame. It’s highly reinforced. There’s a picture of me with one of our guys jumping it over my head. It’s 100 per cent legit, not AI.

Well, we must have done 12 takes and I’m thinking, “at some point he’s going to screw this up and kill me!” But we did it, and he nose-dived that thing repeatedly into the sand and it survived. In fact we used that exact truck at a show a couple of weeks later and there was still sand falling out of it. 

TG: Can you sum Ram up? 

TK: We have this tagline, “Nothing stops Ram". It’s not just marketing, it’s the brand mantra. The span of the truck market is now massive – from a work vehicle to a luxury one and to the muscle truck. It’s no secret that this is where the profit is. This is where the battlefield is.

TG: It sticks the landing – in every sense. Do your customers really jump their $100k-plus Ram TRXs?

TK: I don’t think many jump them quite that aggressively. But do they jump them? Absolutely. There’s a place near here in Michigan called Silver Lake sand dunes, and on any random weekend you’ll find people driving their trucks and flying over the back side of the dunes. Same thing with the Dodge Demon. “We’re going to show this thing on a track doing a wheelie!” That’s what we do. 

TG: Is the ongoing war with Iran hurting sales?

TK: It’s shifting the mix towards more hybrid powertrains, and away from diesel to gas in the heavy duty trucks, with diesel now costing seven bucks a gallon. Which probably doesn’t sound crazy to you. 

TG: You’re big on the trad muscle car, right?

TK: I like all performance cars but if I had to pick one type, I’d definitely say muscle cars – more than a dedicated sports or track car type vehicle. People expect me to be a ‘Mopar or no car’ guy, but I appreciate performance from everybody. When competitor vehicles come out, you know credit where it’s due… it pushes all of us. 

TG: Tell us about SRT’s comeback. 

TK: This is one of the things I didn’t fight hard enough to keep. SRT is a cool thing if you’re an enthusiast but it’s so much more than that internally. It’s a performance division right across the Dodge, Ram and Jeep divisions. It allows us to have a dedicated skunkworks division outside of the fray within the company. We’re working on something right now I believe is a game-changer. Americans hate turbo lag. But we have an engine that has the transient response of a supercharged V8. There’s stuff going on that would never have happened in the mainstream engineering organisation, but works with a smaller team. 

TG: You have a philosophy called ‘last tenth’. How does that work?

TK: Here’s the abridged version. In school I was told, “do well, study hard, get good grades, and you’ll be a success". But I soon realised this was a complete lie. Doing well in school meant studying what other people did, memorising it, and regurgitating it. It guarantees you nothing. What guarantees success in life is creating and building something, pushing beyond what you think is possible. Pushing for that last tenth. It’s not a racing thing, it’s not about a tenth of a second. It’s about realising that when you think something’s good enough it’s not good enough. You’ve got to go further. That’s how you end up with cars that can do wheelies and trucks that can really jump.