The V6 Durango Is Back Because Dodge Needs To ‘Ramp Up’ Hemi Production, Whatever That Means

I need all my Pentastar V6 Heads to stand up right now. This is for you! Just a couple of months after Dodge said its entire Durango lineup would be V8 only, it realized that perhaps that wasn’t the greatest idea for you know selling a practical family crossover. Now, the strange little automaker is reversing course and reintroducing its tried-and-true 3. 6-liter V6 to the Durango in its entry-level GT trim. It’s sort of like the V6 hiatus never happened, considering the fact that the 2025 V6 is still shown on Dodge’s website. It still produces 295 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque, and it’ll slot right below the 5. 7-liter Hemi-powered GT with its 360 horsepower. Both SUVs come with a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission and are rear-drive as standard, with four-wheel drive as a $2,000 option. It’s impossible to know what this actually means, but Dodge says it reintroduced the V6 as it “ramps up” the supply of the V8. I don’t know about you, but how is it not already ramped? It has been in production since 2003. Maybe it has something to do with the previous leadership’s wind-down of V8s, but I sort of doubt it. In any case, the 2026 Durango GT V6 will start at $40,990, including destination. That’s a $500 discount, according to Dodge’s online configurator. If you yearn for the V8, you’ll have to shell out $44,690, so it’ll cost you an extra $3,700. A small price to pay for a piece of real American muscle, if you ask me. While the whole “ramp up” argument is interesting, I think the real reason Dodge is bringing back the V6 is a simple one: an all-V8 lineup makes the Durango far too expensive compared to its competitors. When you consider the fact that it’s also one of the oldest cars on sale today, it becomes a very hard sell. Sure, Dodge will tout that the ‘Rango just had its best Q3 sales report in 20 years, selling 20, 018 vehicles during the period and 54, 417 so far in 2025, but it lags behind segment leaders like the Kia Telluride (92, 498), Honda Pilot (94, 607) and Chevy Traverse (103, 632). I cannot imagine killing off its cheapest version the V6 would have helped matters much. Of course, Dodge offers performance variants of the Durango no one else can match, like the 475 hp 6. 4-liter Hemi Durango R/T, which will reopen for orderers in the first quarter of 2026. At the top of the pile, there’s the supercharged 6. 2-liter 710 hp Durango SRT Hellcat, which starts at a tick over $80,000. No one else in the space is touching that, and that’s gotta count for something.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2032007/dodge-ramp-up-hemi-production/