I’m a bit shocked at the dollars the articles mentioned these are pulling. You need to really want one of these to plunk down $20,000 and $30,000 USD for one now. There are so many options for a vehicle in that range to out run and out handle this especially as the target audience is aging out rapidliy.

The euro stuff can be unreliable and weird but it’s mostly fun to drive. They are small, light and generally love to spend their life at the top end of their rev range. This is the opposite

Mostly, it just takes me watching the traffic falling behind me at the stoplight. It really is a quick car, but it could use few parts to get it to where I want it.

It might just be that demand was limited, it was an expensive sports car with limited functionality and fairly low performance for it’s cost. Though according to ALLPAR, it was also meant as a test bed vehicle with no thought to profits, so it might just have been produced while opportunities existed. I really have no…

But then you have to touch the automatic transmission lever that’s shared with a Caravan to place your Prowler into “D” so you can go scoot off for some fun

The real issue with the Prowler, as William mentioned, is that it over-promised and badly under-delivered. Plymouth advertised it as a halo car. What you actually got was a cool and unique exterior surrounding a hodgepodge of 90's Chrysler mediocrity. Was a minivan V6 and a clunky 4 speed auto really the best they…

You want to know what the sad thing is? 20 years from now people will be talking about how in the dying stages of the internal combustion engine, how slow they were compared to modern electric vehicles.

And going back even further, there was a reason to be excited when a Mustang in 1982 had 157hp. There were some slow times in the 70s. (Though I have yet to experience a car as plush as a 70s land yacht).

The Mustang GT started under $18,000 in 1996. The Prowler was about $38,000 in 1997.

No Chrysler apologist here, but I think you whiffed on the context of where Chrysler was in the early-to-mid-90's when this was designed and rolled out:

Know what’s the biggest disappointment of the Prowler?

All of the negative press it got.

I’m not saying that this particular car is right for the “cheap car option” in the US market, only that we might need a new cheap car sometime soon.

That’s another bubble that will eventually pop, one way or another.

How long before a super cheap car will be necessary in the US?

I can completely acknowledge that it is a quality product with a good track record. But, it is a product built by a company in pursuit of profit and sold at a reasonable price, so I cannot believe that it will be completely free of issues in the long run.  

Congrats, you’re one data point. Have you polled the owners of the other 245,658 Tacomas sold that year?

Yeah, I’m not sure how an outside supplier could screw up so much on an engine that they’re known for, but it’s probably best that it was dropped.

I dunno, a quick search told me that it had a recall for a lower ball joint and the potential for transmission problems.

The diesels were a shit show and, from what I have read, the platform overall has some reliability issues. I would trust the gas 5.6 liter though.

I rather like the simple lines of the 2 door Fairmont, but the thought of a “mustang wagon” is hard to hate.