Advertisements
4 Plymouth Prowler
The niche automotive culture of hot rodding is all about pairing retro style with powerful and loud engines, a combination that looks good and performs well – when the builds are done right. Designers and builders like Boyd Coddington, Chip Foose, and Jesse James represented the best of hot rod culture over the past few decades, and their designs inspired Plymouth to try to bring a modern take on the hot rod to the market in the late 1990s.
At first glance, the Prowler looks pretty awesome thanks to the sleek shape and open front wheels. The Prowler’s mechanical design even includes a rear-mounted transmission for better weight distribution, and a chassis made mostly out of aluminum. But somewhere along the development process, things started to go awry. The Prowler received only a V6, in an attempt to keep weight down that nonetheless deserted the long history of American motoring. Even worse, that rear-mounted trans was a slushy four speed automatic, rather than a stick shift, which didn’t help to put the scant 250 horsepower to the ground, and even with a weight of 2,800 pounds, the first Prowlers could only get to 60 miles per hour in 7.2 seconds.
Advertisements