Plymouth Prowler
- Thread starter 1978 NYB
- Start date
I dug that article.
I did not personally know Tom Gale but industry take on him was he was well respected.
I had not previously known why Chrysler did the Prowler. As a former "car guy" myself, trying new stuff on low volume models (like aluminum bodies with the Prowler) makes both good engineering and economic sense to me.
Read the debates Ford has before doing an aluminum F-150 .. their best selling vehicle. I dont recall all the details but i know they were sweatin' it out to make sure that project did NOT get flubbed up .. ton of money spent to develop, and if it then didnt sell, it would be the double whammy curse against EOS that capital-intensive businesses need to stay alive.
Anyway, though this article is older (2016) I had not seen a shooter at Chrysler admit what "we" (anybody interested in a design like the Prowler) all knew ... that thing needed a V8 from the factory. I did live through a similar debate at another OEM.. factory V8 in a Fiero did not do either.
Would Chrysler (or GM on the Fiero) have sold a million of them? Course not. Many more than 12K of them? Surely they would have. Nothing more disappointing to "car people" than a hot looking sled that doesn't have giddy-up to match.
Take the following though .. I'd bought one with a Mopar V8 (not sure what powertrain they had in the portfolio they could have used at launch though --- 5L-ish LA derivatives as the new Hemi was later?): The manual V-8 Prowler that ymouth wasshould've built
That is just what Canadian dealer and shop Legendary Motorcar did in 2006 to this highly customized 1999 Prowler. It sold today on Bring a Trailer for a substantial $73,500 (including fees). This thing is truly wild.
It was stripped down and blessed with a more performance-oriented driveline; Legendary Motorcar chose the massively powerful LS7 engine, which was introduced in the Z06 Corvette the same year this car was built. A Porsche G50 transaxle replaced the factory four-speed Autostick.
The whole project obviously required a substantial amount of fabrication and surgery to make everything fit, judging from the photos and documents. Given the considerable cost of an LS7 when new and the untold hours it took to complete the build, it is safe to say that the final build cost is likely much higher than what someone just paid for it.
For context, this result is $28,900 above the #1-condition (Concours) average price of a ’99 Prowler, which is $44,600. Do the bar-napkin math, and for the cost of purchasing a perfect Prowler and installing your own LS7 and G50 five-speed, buying this car would have cut out a lot of headache.
I did not personally know Tom Gale but industry take on him was he was well respected.
I had not previously known why Chrysler did the Prowler. As a former "car guy" myself, trying new stuff on low volume models (like aluminum bodies with the Prowler) makes both good engineering and economic sense to me.
Read the debates Ford has before doing an aluminum F-150 .. their best selling vehicle. I dont recall all the details but i know they were sweatin' it out to make sure that project did NOT get flubbed up .. ton of money spent to develop, and if it then didnt sell, it would be the double whammy curse against EOS that capital-intensive businesses need to stay alive.
Anyway, though this article is older (2016) I had not seen a shooter at Chrysler admit what "we" (anybody interested in a design like the Prowler) all knew ... that thing needed a V8 from the factory. I did live through a similar debate at another OEM.. factory V8 in a Fiero did not do either.
Would Chrysler (or GM on the Fiero) have sold a million of them? Course not. Many more than 12K of them? Surely they would have. Nothing more disappointing to "car people" than a hot looking sled that doesn't have giddy-up to match.
Take the following though .. I'd bought one with a Mopar V8 (not sure what powertrain they had in the portfolio they could have used at launch though --- 5L-ish LA derivatives as the new Hemi was later?): The manual V-8 Prowler that ymouth wasshould've built
That is just what Canadian dealer and shop Legendary Motorcar did in 2006 to this highly customized 1999 Prowler. It sold today on Bring a Trailer for a substantial $73,500 (including fees). This thing is truly wild.
It was stripped down and blessed with a more performance-oriented driveline; Legendary Motorcar chose the massively powerful LS7 engine, which was introduced in the Z06 Corvette the same year this car was built. A Porsche G50 transaxle replaced the factory four-speed Autostick.
The whole project obviously required a substantial amount of fabrication and surgery to make everything fit, judging from the photos and documents. Given the considerable cost of an LS7 when new and the untold hours it took to complete the build, it is safe to say that the final build cost is likely much higher than what someone just paid for it.
For context, this result is $28,900 above the #1-condition (Concours) average price of a ’99 Prowler, which is $44,600. Do the bar-napkin math, and for the cost of purchasing a perfect Prowler and installing your own LS7 and G50 five-speed, buying this car would have cut out a lot of headache.
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This Hellcat-Swapped 1999 Plymouth Prowler Rights a Historic Wrong
There are no do-overs in life, and few things exemplify that more than the Plymouth Prowler. The nouveaux hot rod was supposed to be a daring sequel to the howlin' Dodge Viper when it launched with great fanfare in 1997.
It was one of the wildest designs to ever sneak past the bean counters at a major manufacturer—and saddled with a gutless V6, it never had a chance. The Prowler stumbled out of the gate. Four years later, Plymouth was dead.
That's the real tragedy of the Plymouth Prowler. History is littered with the husks of good cars felled by a few bad decisions, but the Prowler is confounding in how close it came to greatness.
The hard part of building a modern homage to a Thirties hot rod shouldn't be deciding whether or not to stick a giant engine in there. That's a non-negotiable. Why go 95 percent of the way with a wild exterior, then give it a V6 from a Dodge Intrepid and call it a day?
King Hooter
Well-Known Member
My dad wants a Prowler so badly right now. Even more so now after his medical scare at Thanksgiving. I can remember when they first came out he didn't like them. Then he got to have a seat in a black and red one at the Chrysler display in the Mall of America back in 2001, it became a bucket list car.
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