Ford Rival Stellantis Revives Dead SRT Performance Division

Ford rival Stellantis has faced its fair share of (mostly self-inflicted) struggles over the past couple of years, many of which happened as a result of its decision to discontinue the V8-powered muscle cars and trucks that made Dodge a popular entity among enthusiasts. After former CEO Carlos Tavares left the company last year, Stellantis has been in the process of righting those mistakes, moves that included bringing back Tim Kuniskis as the CEO of Ram. Now, Kuniskis will also oversee the return of the company’s defunct Street and Racing Technology (SRT) division, too.

Kuniskis has been appointed to a new role, in addition to his existing duties – head of American brands and North America marketing and retail strategy, and he’ll report directly to Antonio Filosa, Stellantis CEO. That role is focused on building and enhancing the connections customers have with the company’s products, but it also involves overseeing the return of SRT, which originally surfaced back in 2004.

That division created quite a few performance-focused machines including the Dodge Viper, Ram SRT-10, Neon SRT-4, and Charger/Challenger SRT Hellcat, but Stellantis has been in the process of phasing it out slowly as of late. This time, however, Stellantis notes that SRT will be focused on “unifying high-performance engineering across Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram under a single, dedicated identity,” and will “oversee Direct Connection and North American motorsports initiatives under Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, including participation in the NHRA and Ram’s recently announced plans to return to the NASCAR Truck Series in 2026.”

“We’re getting the band back together,” said Kuniskis. “SRT is another box we needed to check as we head into a product launch cadence enabling more performance than we’ve ever seen before. We’re working with our product development and technology organization to select the best engineers in powertrain and vehicle dynamics to build a team worthy of the SRT name.”