This approach would be pivotal in getting the Prowler off the ground. The Viper had shown Chrysler the time and financial benefits of having a small skunkworks team dedicated to one project, bringing in outside engineering help only when necessary. After the Viper, Tom Gale wanted each of Chrysler’s brands to have a halo car. The success of the LH cars, Jeep Grand Cherokee, second generation Ram and the Neon was Chrysler finding its design confidence. First shown as a concept at Detroit in 1989, Iacocca initially balked at the (relatively paltry) $70 million investment required, but the Viper’s rapturous reception convinced him to approve the car for production as a 1993 model.įreed from Iacocca ,who retired in 1992, by the middle of the decade Chrysler was on a roll. The maximum amount of engine in the minimum amount of car – what was to become the Dodge Viper. Working with head of design Tom Gale, Craig Durfee sketched a modern version of the AC Cobra. Head of Product Development Bob Lutz had a better idea to improve Chrysler’s image. Mopar Finds its Design Mojo 1989 Dodge Viper Concept Buying troubled Lamborghini, another company that lurched from crisis to crisis was never going to work, although it would indirectly inspire the LH cars. Lee Iacocca Introduces the Plymouth Voyager in 1984īut by the end of the decade he was losing touch with the market and his desire to make Chrysler more European led to some terrible decisions – the Chrysler TC by Maserati was a monumental blunder on every level. The K-car and the minivan had been runaway successes and gave Iacocca a lot of freedom to make decisions unopposed at the top of the company. Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca was a brilliant salesman who by the early eighties had dragged Chrysler from the brink of bankruptcy back into the black. A Dodge or a Plymouth was the car for someone who went to a loud metal concert and then woke up in a stranger’s bed the next morning with three hangovers. Ford and GM muscle cars were too apple pie for me. Months of carefully examining the for-sale section of Custom Car magazine had convinced me I had to have a Mopar of some description. Not an ideal daily driver, but petrol was cheap and I was young and stupid. A love affair first ignited over twenty-five years ago by a snarling, overpowered and under-braked green hell-beast of a car – my 1971 Plymouth Duster 340. It’s not a galloping shock to regular readers that I’m a massive Mopar fanboy. All of this misses just how bold and influential the Prowler was, and what makes it so interesting. Automotive edge lord hacks will decry it for having the wrong engine and transmission. Another car in an endless wave of wheeled kitsch that remixed a rose-tinted past for the nostalgia-addicted present. It’s easy to dismiss the Plymouth Prowler as lazy boomer bait.
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