- Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis admits he still says “Dodge Ram” out loud.
- He says a Dodge-Ram reunion would be a non-event for buyers.
- Most customers still assume Dodge and Ram are one brand.
It’s been more than 16 years since the late Sergio Marchionne made the still-debated decision to split Dodge and Ram into two separate brands. Dodge would focus on muscle cars, SUVs, and minivans, while Ram took over as a standalone truck division.
Yet despite the corporate divide, the “Dodge Ram” name has refused to disappear from public vocabulary, leaving many to wonder if the two names should ever have parted ways at all.
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That question came up recently in a conversation with Tim Kuniskis, current CEO of Ram and former head of Dodge, during an interview with Mopar Insiders on the sidelines of the Detroit Auto Show. To some surprise, Kuniskis admitted he still finds himself saying “Dodge Ram”, and doesn’t mind one bit.
“I screw up all the time. All the time,” Kuniskis said. “I remember the first time, when we started talking about making the reality show for NASCAR, and I was meeting with Dana White. We were so lucky that he wanted to help us with this program. He was saying ‘Dodge Ram,’ and he was actually asking – without really asking – if that was a problem. I told him no, I do it all the time. Everybody does. The whole world loves Dodge Ram. Everybody gets Dodge Ram. It’s the same thing.”
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Ordinarily, this kind of brand confusion would give a marketing team heartburn. But Kuniskis doesn’t see it as a liability. In his view, it just shows how strongly people associate the two names. The familiarity, he says, is “a reflection of how deeply rooted the brand identity is with customers”.
What If They Got Back Together?
Asked point blank whether Dodge and Ram should be reunited under the Stellantis umbrella, Kuniskis didn’t said: “They’re all in the same company. Yeah, we could do it. And quite frankly, if we did it, nobody would care.”
He suspects most customers would greet such a move with a shrug. “I think we get more excitement out of saying we got 10,000 orders on HEMIs than we would from saying it’s Dodge Ram again. Because everyone would say, ‘What do you mean? I thought it already was.’ It would be a non-issue.”
Still, he’s not entirely dismissing the idea. If the public really pushed for it, Kuniskis seems open to listening. “I’d be super curious to see what the feedback is on that. Do people care or not?”
In other words, if enough people genuinely push for the return of the Dodge Ram name, there’s a chance the two brands could officially reunite. For now, though, they’ll stick with their “separated but living together” setup, still operating through the same dealer network and relying on the same service technicians.
The latest U.S. sales figures underline just how different their trajectories have become. In 2025, Ram moved a hefty 431,670 units, while Dodge, by comparison, logged just 101,927. The gap says as much about Ram’s sustained strength as it does about Dodge’s continued challenges and thin product lineup.
