She announced a book with a cross dressing serial killer. How is that transphobic?  It’s just a piece of fiction, you know?  Or are we living in a world where art and freedom of expression are now censored  so there are no opposing views allowed? FFS, stop being such a bunch of babies.

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…

I think the author is simply too young here.

I especially wanted to mention the Neon, which came in a DOHC version with 150hp, which was damn good at the time for that price (even the SOHC engine made a competitive 130). It was light and it handled well and the R/T and ACR packages made them decently competitive in SCCA (IIRC, but I’m getting old). It bowed out…

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

Generally what could’ve been a good article was tainted by a shitty ignorant bias. Not to mention too many inline pictures and Kinja cancer means this page runs like 100% ass.

Well put. Chrysler in the 1990s was making finally making some interesting and diverse cars after the mainly-the-same front-drivers of the ‘80s. In addition to the cars you mentioned, Chrysler was also killing it with Jeep.

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

Thank you. I feel like we’re living in collective amnesiaville sometimes. I give a lot of credit to the Altima and its VQ engine for bringing HP numbers up to where they are now for random sedans and such. But all through the 90's, around 200 hp was the cutoff for “hey, that’s kinda a powerful car!” for the layman.

The Neon was great, it just suffered from 90's American build quality.

PT cruiser didn’t exist until 2000 and the 300M didn’t exist until 1999.

Everyone involved seems to be whiffing on the entire concept of the early-to-mid-90's.

Even the jellybean F-150 was built on the same frame as the ‘79 model because neither Ford nor GM had any money in the ‘90s.

I guess I attribute it to its ubiquity, but the hype around the PT Cruiser has largely been forgotten. Around the turn of the century, the demand was so high that they had long waiting lists at nearly every dealer. I remember a colleague lamenting that he’d been waiting 6 months since he’d put down a deposit. His…

Seems a lot of people like to compare life 20-30 years ago to today’s standards. Cars, jobs, politics, and other relationships. Sometimes this doesn’t make sense.  Still, would be nice if someone dropped a modern hemi v8 in a Prowler.

You need at least diesel F250 to t0w that. You can’t tow anything with a car!!!!

Yeah, this.  The cars did end up having their flaws (Neon head gasket, anyone?) but they were smash hits and quite profitable. Methinks the author didn’t check into it to make sure his memories from his “pre-teen years” were correct.

I remember the 300M in particular was well reviewed by the automotive press. Not sure where this author got the idea it was some non-competitive POS.

Yeah I was scratching my head at the heavy revisionist history happening about ‘90s Chrysler. They had hype, the LH, the Neon, the redone Caravan and Ram had a ton of acclaim, they won awards and people were excited for their product. In the ‘90s, Chrysler was pretty good at generating excitement, and the Prowler was…

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:

The Prowler was essentially a mass-produced street rod. If you were disappointed by its performance, don’t ever drive a real street rod. The fastest ones perform well only in a straight line, until you need to stop. They are built to cruise and be noticed, which the Prowler did well.