RossD wrote:Jerry From LA wrote: They put the V-6 in because insurance would be prohibitive with the V-8.I don't know if I believe that considering they put V-10 in the Viper and the SRT-10 Ram. It might be more of a packaging constraint.
If I recall, the price point was cheaper and they planned on making more of these. The other two cars were definitely low volume niche machines.
I always hated these.
To me they are a bigger stain on the roads than the Aztec. Fortunately I don't see either anymore.
lol not to hate on anyone here but the drivers were usually men 55+ years old and minimum 300lbs who had at least a harley or two. So basically a poor man's 911?
the Prowler was just a cool looking body wrapped around the drivetrain from the Intrepid, but with a long tube between the engine and trans.. i think it was the first car that got the "wiggle the shifter sideways to pretend it's not a boring automatic that will kill itself if you accidentally put the wrong fluid in it" transmission..
That 3.5 was no slouch, and I'll admit that the Auto-Stick transmission was the best manu-matic produced at the time, or the next 10+ years. I agree, the 4.7 (a-la Howler concept) would have been perfect.
Of course the Prowler would have been better with a monster V8...think Hellcat Prowler. And a 6spd manual would have been icing on the cake. But so what? As has been said, the car that was sent to market wasn't "slow" for the late '90's. Never had one, but I love 'em. I wouldn't kick one out of my driveway.
Kind of a shame about that motor/tranny. I never bothered to find out what was in them, just thought they looked cool, and recently that I hadn't seen one in a long time. Thanks to you guys, I now understand why.
Would it be possible to do a rear engine though? If I'm understanding the problem, a lot of the swap issue deals with the gap between motor and transaxle. Could a rear mounted front wheel drive platform work? Maybe Golf or Vtec?
Wasn't that the same engine they used in the Skip Barber cars of the era? I'm sure they didn't have a manual trans.
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