Saw one this morning at the hardware store. I thought they were cool when they came out and boy howdy are they still cool.
Even if the performance isn't 100% I love those things. It's like an entire engineering department went Jerry Maguire and said to the bean counters (who just killed their brand) "Berk this, Berk you, we're going to get drunk and build something cool."
Anyone know the real story?
I’ll never not turn my head when I see one.
In b4 Prowler h8. 
Pretty sure it was a real life engineering exercise with the drivetrain and aluminum body that was pushed by Bob Lutz, but especially Tom Gale.
Wearymicrobe has owned a few. He is pretty knowledgeable. Hopefully he'll chime in.
In reply to Cooter :
This is where i chime in and wax poetic about how Chrysler in the mid-90s was the most hopeful thing that ever happened in the automotive world during my lifetime, right until 1998. They were a hotbed of innovation and if their trajectory had continued then every car sold today would be different. 1993-1997 Chryco was knocking everything out of the park after a long period of financial struggle during a time when 'too big to fail' wasn't a thing, and their adversity was the mother of a lot of innovation and forward thinking. Too bad the merger was not halted on antitrust grounds, but 10 years after losing control of their own operations Chrysler was in the dumpster and the government was forking out cash to make up for all the thing they failed to stop before. 10 years after that it still basically is in the dumpster, having been stripmined of what was most profitable (Jeep, RAM, because the rest was so undercut and mismanaged), and all else left to rot or for sale to the highest bidder.
Appleseed said:Wearymicrobe has owned a few. He is pretty knowledgeable. Hopefully he'll chime in.
Love mine. I have had 6-7 of them over my life. Anybody who questions the performance in the real world has never driven one. I love the work that came out of there engineering departments at the time, the Viper was a monster, the Prowler was getting off the ground. The ACR Neon was amazing for the time.They did that all aluminum Neons well that was great.
Anybody locally who wants to drive one is free to take mine out for a half and hour. You will come back sold on the concept or hate the car with a passion I can say that. Nobody is neutral on them.
Vigo said:Innovation and forward thinking
yeah... CAB forward thinking
(sorry i’ll see myself out)
I never cared for the styling, but you have to give credit to Plymouth for thinking way outside the box.
I’m not a Chrysler guy, but there is no question they were design innovators.
Even mundane things- minivan? K-cars?
Even truck styling- the Ram truck was the first to have that “when I grow up I wanna he a Kenworth” look- Ford and GM adopted it later.
Too bad there were so many other bad things about the company...
In reply to SVreX :
The Stealth R/T was pretty over the top too, even if most of us knew it was just a Mitsubishi.
The drivetrain and suspension setup is really unique on those cars. I only recently learned about the rear transaxle setup. We can all wish the drivetrain had an extra pedal but I dig it either way.
There’s one on a used car lot near us. We’ve been wondering how much of the year the wife could get away with using it as her daily. Obviously snow days are out but the drivetrain is basically an Intrepid right?
They basically took an Intrepid transmission and put it in the back with a torque tube.
One of the caveats that people don't talk about when they call the Prowler 'slow' is that it has super heavy 20x10s with 295s on the rear. Put reasonable size/weight tires on it and it would probably drop about 4 tenths in the 1/4 and land in the mid 14s, which is right where an auto trans Mustang GT was in 2001 and faster than one was in 1997 (the Prowler production years).
While inside Chrysler I recall the Prowler program was a joint venture with Alcoa. Both sides got testy about warranty issues. The plan was to use Prowler assembly knowledge to further Chrysler use of Aluminum ahead of many other automakers but I understood that Alcoa decided to keep the IP of aluminum body construction to themselves. Thus conflict and things fell apart. There was supposed to be a second gen joint venture car to follow the Prowler. Much more general use.
Prowlers had quirks but are nice vehicles.
The Prowler came out when I was a kid, and I remember seeing one at the DC auto show in 1996 or so, in the flagship purple color of course. I've always thought they were super cool and would love to have one today. People whine about the V6/auto combination but I think the automatic probably fits the car's character pretty well, and the V6 allegedly had more power than the best V8 Chrysler had at the time, which would have been hard to fit in the bay anyway.
If I could spend time driving one for part of a day, I absolutely would. And I echo all of the above sentiments about mid-90s Mopar. They were really on a roll and it's a damn shame what Daimler did to them.
I passed one (that's for sale) on the way to the office this morning.
Vigo said:This is where i chime in and wax poetic about how Chrysler in the mid-90s was the most hopeful thing that ever happened in the automotive world during my lifetime, right until 1998.
To this day I refuse to own any Mercedes, on principle, purely because of what arrogant, lying douchebags they were throughout the merger.
Vigo said:They basically took an Intrepid transmission and put it in the back with a torque tube.
One of the caveats that people don't talk about when they call the Prowler 'slow' is that it has super heavy 20x10s with 295s on the rear. Put reasonable size/weight tires on it and it would probably drop about 4 tenths in the 1/4 and land in the mid 14s, which is right where an auto trans Mustang GT was in 2001 and faster than one was in 1997 (the Prowler production years).
Put good tires and light rims on them and you are right they move.
The 2001 got the much better torque converter as well which cut some time. With a 6 speed auto another 0.4 easy cut off as well.
Got to remeber the timing as well.
2001 Mustang V8 260 hp @ 5250 RPM & 302 lb-ft @ 4000RPM.
2001 Prowler 255 ft-lbs. @ 3950 rpmBase engine size 3.5 L Horsepower253 hp @ 6400 rpm
A stock prowler on run flats will do 5.7 0-60. WIth good tires and geared right they do a 5.3, in 2001 with an automatic with 20 inch chrome rims.
Prowler also had a couple hundred fewer LBs to haul around than the contemporary Mustang of the time.
Duke said:Vigo said:This is where i chime in and wax poetic about how Chrysler in the mid-90s was the most hopeful thing that ever happened in the automotive world during my lifetime, right until 1998.
To this day I refuse to own any Mercedes, on principle, purely because of what arrogant, lying douchebags they were throughout the merger.
My mom owns a 2005 Crossfire roadster. I've been driving it the last few weeks and it really exemplifies a lot about how that merger went down.
Wonder what class they are in? I can't recall anyone ever autocrossing one. Maybe it's untapped potential.
Is it April 1st already?
How did we make it this deep without anyone mentioning that this exotic car could be had with...
... a trailer!
and the V6 allegedly had more power than the best V8 Chrysler had at the time,
That's true, as far as it goes. The 5.9 and 4.7 had 235-245hp, the 3.5 from 98-up had ~250. If i'm remembering correctly, that 3.5 was Chrysler's first 'modern' engine to make 1hp/ci when it launched with 214hp (one year before the Neon engines came out and surpassed that). I had that 1g 3.5 engine in an Intrepid that i modified with larger throttle bodies (there were two), a cowl induction setup that sounded GLORIOUS, slightly lower gears in the trans and a high stall converter. That thing flat hauled for what it was and that's part of the reason that i know a 500-600lb lighter Prowler is not slow in spite of never having driven one. One of the things Wearymicrobe pointed out is that that engine (both gens that are relevant here) made peak power very near the rev limiter, and it gave it a very eager feel. The earlier ones also had a manifold tuning valve that made a noticable difference about 4800rpm when it hooked the plenums together, almost like a soft vtec engagement. If you let the noises out of those engines they are fun to rev out and make you wish for more RPM so it would just keep going.
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