Fewer Than 370 Of This Viper-Powered Ram Left The Factory In 2006
Blackout pickup trucks are everywhere in America now, but dark wheels and smoked trim usually do most of the heavy lifting. Back in 2006, Dodge applied the same idea to something considerably more dangerous.
Under the hood sat 500 hp worth of Viper V10, wrapped in a package produced in numbers small enough to make today’s limited-edition trucks look practically mass-market.
Blackout Trucks Became A Formula, But This One Had Teeth
Walk through almost any new truck lot in the USA and you’ll eventually find a blackout package. Glossy trim disappears, the wheels turn charcoal or black, and suddenly a perfectly sensible pickup looks like it spends its evenings intimidating parking garages. It’s an easy formula because buyers love it, and automakers can create a distinct trim without reinventing the truck underneath.
What’s cool is that Dodge was already playing with that idea nearly two decades ago. The difference was that its 2006 blackout truck didn’t need darker trim to make up for anything. The pickup underneath already belonged to one of the most outrageous chapters in American performance truck history, complete with an engine borrowed from the Dodge Viper.
Modern blacked-out trucks often sell the visual promise of performance, while this one started with genuine muscle and simply dressed for the occasion. What you got was a rare Dodge pickup that looks surprisingly normal and modern now, even if the hardware underneath belongs firmly to the excessively powerful mid-2000s.
Dodge Made Its Viper-Powered Ram Even Harder To Spot
The Dodge Ram SRT-10 was already difficult to explain with a straight face. Dodge took its full-size Ram pickup and installed a 505 cubic-inch, 8.3-liter V10 related to the engine used in the Viper. Factory output stood at 500 horsepower and 525 lb-ft of torque, giving America a pickup whose engine bay looked like some very serious work had gone down.
Regular Cab versions paired the V10 with a Tremec T-56 six-speed manual transmission, while the Quad Cab used a four-speed automatic. That created two distinct versions of the same Viper-powered Ram SRT-10. One leaned harder into the muscle truck idea, while the four-door model added enough everyday usability to make owning an 8.3-liter pickup seem kind of reasonable.
Not Just Another Ram
The Ram SRT-10 was already scarce by full-size pickup standards. Total production reached 9,527 trucks, split between 5,533 Regular Cabs and 3,994 Quad Cabs. Against the enormous production numbers normally associated with American pickups, the entire SRT-10 family was a small club from the start.
For 2006, Dodge made that club considerably more exclusive. Brilliant Black Crystal paint covered the body, while 22-inch wheels wore a Dark Nickel Pearl finish. Darkened headlights and black chrome grille inserts carried the theme up front, and a serialized plaque inside reminded owners that this wasn’t just another black Ram rolling out of a dealership.
The Night Runner Missed Its Own 400-Truck Target
That special edition was the 2006 Dodge Ram SRT-10 Night Runner, and its production numbers are the real reason collectors should care today. Dodge allocated 400 examples, but only 370 Night Runners were officially built. Of those, 119 were Regular Cabs and 251 were Quad Cabs.
Put those figures against the 9,527-unit production run for the Ram SRT-10 and the Night Runner represents roughly 3.9 percent of all SRT-10 production. The six-speed manual Regular Cab is rarer still, with just 119 examples officially produced. For anyone hunting rare Dodge trucks in North America, that’s the sort of production math that turns an interesting special edition into a genuine needle-in-a-haystack collectible.
To add to that, the serialized plaques add another wrinkle. A seriously low-mileage Quad Cab that surfaced in 2025 carried plaque number 400 despite the official production total stopping at 370 trucks. That means the plaque sequence reflected the planned allocation rather than serving as a literal count of completed Night Runners. Collectors love this sort of production-number oddity, as apparently owning a 500-hp Viper-powered pickup isn’t enough entertainment on its own.
Black Paint Never Tamed The Viper Under The Hood
The Night Runner package didn’t bring extra horsepower, but it didn’t need to. The 8.3-liter Dodge Viper V10 remained rated at 500 hp and 525 lb-ft of torque, making the 2006 Ram SRT-10 one of the most memorable American performance trucks of its era regardless of paint color.
In Regular Cab form, the Ram SRT-10 weighed 5,130 pounds yet could accelerate from 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds. It could cover the quarter-mile in 13.6 seconds at 106 mph and reach a top speed of 154 mph. We don’t need to tell you that those are serious numbers for a full-size pickup today, never mind one engineered when a flip phone still counted as reasonably advanced technology.
All-American Recipe
The Quad Cab added considerable practicality and some weight, tipping the scales at 5,618 pounds. Even so, it could hit 60 mph in 5.3 seconds and reach 147 mph. The four-speed automatic made it a different proposition from the manual Regular Cab, but the basic recipe remained solidly American: huge engine, rear-wheel drive, pickup bed.
Dodge also modified the chassis to cope with all that V10 power. The SRT-10 sat lower than a standard Ram, dropping 1 inch at the front and 2.5 inches at the rear, while ventilated disc brakes helped haul the truck back down from speeds no Home Depot run had any business reaching. A modified 2006 Night Runner later produced more than 523 hp at the wheels on a dyno, which also highlights why an untouched example is so valuable to collectors today.
Scarcity Finally Caught Up With The Night Runner
The used market shows how the Dodge Ram SRT-10 Night Runner has gradually moved from forgotten 2000s muscle truck to legitimate collector pickup. In late 2022, a 25,000-mile Regular Cab example reached a high bid of $36,750 without meeting reserve. It wasn’t completely stock, but the bidding showed there was already serious interest in these rare Viper-powered Rams.
A 45,000-mile six-speed Night Runner sold for $33,500 in 2023. That truck retained the signature Brilliant Black Crystal finish and Dark Nickel Pearl wheels, even though it also carried aftermarket modifications. Then, in 2025, a Quad Cab with just 2,200 miles surfaced carrying plaque number 400, giving collectors a look at just how well preserved one of these trucks can be.
The Night Runner’s Final Trick
The Night Runner makes more sense as a collector vehicle now than it probably did when new. Blackout packages have since become common across the American truck market, but very few came attached to a hand-shifting, Viper-powered pickup capable of running to 60 mph in under five seconds. With only 370 officially built, the 2006 Dodge Ram SRT-10 Night Runner combines the right sort of rarity with one of the most ridiculous powertrains ever installed in a production pickup.
Is the appeal purely nostalgia? Not quite. Plenty of rare trucks owe their collectibility to graphics, trim packages, or low production alone. The Night Runner started with one of America’s great performance-truck oddities and then made it dramatically harder to find. Nearly 20 years later, that black paint looks like camouflage did its thing pretty well.
Sources: Dodge, Bring a Trailer,
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