A few days ago, I saw something pretty magical while driving. It was something uncommon, almost extinct, yet attention-hungry, like a panda dressed like Captain Kirk, blasting a couple of air horns. It was something I can honestly say I’ve never actually desired, but something I am absolutely delighted once existed. We’re also far enough away from the time period when it existed that it feels almost like a strange fever dream, and I have to remind myself that, yes, this was a real thing, once. It was a Plymouth Prowler. With the optional matching trailer.
Go ahead. Laugh. Sneer, even. I don’t care. I saw this thing on the road and I craned my neck around to follow its passage like a dog locks on a meatball in your hand.
Keep in mind that this is not a car I’d ever really want to own. If you were to take the demographic portrait of whom the 1997 Plymouth Prowler was designed for and held it up to my bare skin, it would probably burn and sizzle sickeningly, like a silver cross on a vampire’s chest. It’s not a car for me. I’d look and feel like an absolute fool plopped into that bucket-like body, but, again, I simply don’t care. I absolutely, unashamedly adore that this ridiculous thing existed, and when I saw that orange one zipping down the road, hauling equal parts ass and that remarkable trailer, all these feelings came rushing back, made all the more poignant because the flag this car sailed under, Plymouth, is gone.
Do you remember the trailer I’m talking about? It looked like this:
Remember that? Those trailers that you’d sometimes see behind Prowlers, shaped like the rear quarter of the car, sort of like if you had a roller suitcase shaped like your own ass, but, you know, cool.
Here’s the incredible thing about those Prowler trailers: you could buy them from your fucking Plymouth dealer. This wasn’t some bit of bonkers aftermarket madness, this was a goddamn $5,000 factory option.
Have any other carmakers sold a matching trailer for their cars, through their dealers, before or since? No, they haven’t. And Chrysler didn’t half-ass this thing, either. It wasn’t just some fiberglass eggshell on wheels, this was a real, full featured trailer, technically known as the Ajax trailer, with a fully carpeted interior (which you can still buy replacements for at places like this), lighting, a license plate mount, all so you could have Crown Vic-level trunk space on your tiny two-seat hot rod fantasy.
And, in case this somehow isn’t enough, it’s worth noting that the tow hitch setup on the Prowler was designed exclusively for this specific trailer; it’s not like you could haul your jet ski with the Prowler if you wanted. The hitch was good for a 1000 pound trailer with brakes, but if that was anything other than the official Prowler trailer, you’d void your warranty.
Of course, I suppose you could take a less-charitable look at the trailer, because without it the Prowler’s luggage accommodations were really pretty bleak:
Remember, the convertible top folded under there, so with the top down you were left with this carpeted hillock that really couldn’t hold much more than a couple pizza boxes sitting at the worst possible angles, and maybe a folded jacket or two.
But let’s get back to the Big Picture of the Prowler and just think about what this all means, just for a second; think it through, here. Plymouth, division of Chrysler, one of the members of the Big Three automakers, the same company that crawled and scrambled its way out of bankruptcy with sensible minivans and rational, boring shitboxes known as K-Cars not a decade before this thing, was now targeting a demographic that could charitably be called “Old Dudes With Some Money Who Are Kinda Batshit,” and boy were they giving it their all here.
The Prowler had some interesting engineering, which I’m happy to tell you about (I’m not, really, but David insisted, telling me, bitchily, “what’s the platform? what’s the suspension? Talk about the engineering a bit. This isn’t that entertaining, so make it informative” even though the whole point of this article is that the Prowler is beyond such mundane, rational concerns as “engineering,” but, whatever).
[Editor’s note: Sorry, Jason. I just needed to see that chassis pic below].
I mean, he’s not wrong, there’s certainly some interesting stuff going on here engineering and design-wise: those open front wheels, for example. I can’t think of a single other mass-production car that had an exposed double-wishbone front suspension like that, with fenders that moved with the wheels.
The chassis was light aluminum, and featured the transmission at the rear, fed power by a torque tube, like a C5 Corvette or a Porsche 944. Lots of adhesives were used in construction, and the end result was lightweight and had a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. This is all incredible because this was a completely bespoke platform–it’s not like other limited-niche, very specifically-styled cars like Nissan’s wonderful Pike cars, which also had striking retro designs, but were based on Nissan’s mass-market Micra city car. The Prowler was a much more significant lift for Plymouth.
Prowlers came in colors like that grape soda purple and vitimin-urine yellow and chili grease orange. They had a just so-so V6 engine (it made an even then just okay 214 hp, though a 253 hp option came in 1999) and a miserable four-speed automatic, they wanted to crank whatever K-Tel garbage they remembered playing on their Hi-Fis when they were 18 and tear ass all around the country, hence the need for the trailer to carry all their satin jackets and bottles of gin or stacks of vintage Oui magazines or whatever the hell Prowler drivers deemed necessary for a long-ass road trip to nowhere.
Of course, Chrysler’s purchasing team couldn’t lift that much, which is why the Prowler’s engine came from regular old Chrysler Intrepids and most of the interior switches and other bits were right from the parts buckets. Did this make more sense than using an existing platform with a better engine and unique interior parts?
Maybe, but no existing platform could have pulled off that crazy-ass narrow nose, so, no, an existing platform wouldn’t have worked. This wasn’t the rational decision, but that’s not what this car was about.
Thank fucking every magic god for Plymouth and this wonderful last bellow of life before the division expired in 2001. And yet, I feel like a lot of people treat the Prowler like they treat Guy Fieri — with undisguised contempt, even though, objectively, he’s a great guy who does good things. You’ve all seen the standup bit about Guy Fieri defense, haven’t you? If not, here you go:
He’s right, of course. And I’m pretty sure you could search-and-replace “Plymouth Prowler” for “Guy Fieri” and the bit would still work. Well, maybe not for the altruism stuff; I can’t recall any Plymouth Prowlers being especially charitable.
You don’t have to like the Prowler. But, if you don’t look at the fact it existed with admiration and wonder, you’re just doing life wrong.
We live in an automotive era full of wonderful things, fantastic technical developments, where even the most mundane family crossover could absolutely spank most of the sports cars of our pasts. And yet, at the same time, for all the inane lip service carmaker PR teams give to the ideas of “driving satisfaction” or “performance-bred” or “dynamism” or the constant references to some bastardized idea of DNA, no modern company has the ‘nads to build anything as remotely bonkers as the Prowler was.
Sure, every carmaker is working on some EV crossover that has a face like an alien who found out their spawn-mate has been cheating on them with you and can go from 0 to 60 in three seconds, but nobody is making absurd little two seaters with the option to become absurd little six-wheeled (you know, with that trailer) purple backroad screamers.
No carmaker is undertaking the daunting engineering efforts that went into making those crazy coat-hanger-shaped bumpers meet federal crash standards, because sometimes Capitalism doesn’t have time for fun bullshit.
Especially if the end result looks like this gleefully cross-eyed fella here:
Again, and I dearly hope I’m making this clear, I don’t care what anyone thinks of the Prowler as a car. I don’t even care what I think of it. It just doesn’t matter. What matters is that in the late 1990s, before Great Crossover Takeover happened in full, a major, mainstream–hell, even pretty dull, at this point–automaker could build and sell a halo car as bonkers and specific as the Prowler.
Even the test vehicles for these were unhinged; remember the Pranglers, the Jeep Wrangler-based Prowler development mules? Just look at these things:
And, yes, I’m pretty sure the front light units on that thing are off-the-shelf snowplow headlight/indicator units.
The way Chrysler advertised the Prowler usually acknowledged the hot rod inspiration of the car, and excitedly reminded everyone that, yeah, they get it’s nuts:
Well, most of them. Some commercials that featured the Prowler were strange in a more subtle, David Lynchian way, such as this Plymouth full-line commercial in Canada that gets weirder and darker the more you think about it:
Why is this dude so into Plymouths? Why are they the only cars that seem to pass on that quiet suburban street, and what happened to him to make them the primary focus of his interest? Why has he been seemingly trained like a dog by his, well, I was assuming wife, but, really, she’s more of a captor, isn’t she? Is that man okay? Does the overall calm, idyllic look of that leafy neighborhood and lovely home blind everyone from seeing she has that poor Plymouth-addled simpleton bound by his leg?
I don’t know. I suspect that woman ate Harold decades ago, and regrets nothing. All I want to do in this post is make you take a moment to sit and just consider the Prowler, free of all the pre-conceived ideas you may have about it.
There are lots of exciting and interesting modern cars, and even some genuinely radical ones set to come out, like the Tesla Cybertruck, for example. But the Cybertruck and so many other new and upcoming cars like the Lucid Air or Rivian or whatever, with their cutting-edge tech and impressive performance, all still feel more serious than something like the Prowler. These new edge-pushing cars all take themselves quite seriously, people online are fierce and irritating in their support for these new machines, and it’s all a Big Deal and everything is about how much better one particular design or engineering solution is than the other.
That’s not at all what the Prowler was about. The Prowler was just ridiculous, openly and unashamedly.
It was a strange, beautiful time, and just the fact that this thing existed should give you a little hope, and a reminder that humanity’s greatest defining trait is that, fundamentally, we hate to be bored, and we will do pretty much anything–anything–to avoid it.
Here’s hoping carmakers decide to be this ridiculous again.
(images: Chrysler, Prowler Store, Bring A Trailer)
If I happened to stumble across a near-mint Prowler that wasn’t priced unreasonably, I’d probably buy it and daily drive it.
I don’t mean this out of a sense of irony, or anything. I’d do this for me. It is inherently *interesting* as a car. Odds are decent it’s interesting enough to wake some text-messaging, distracted-driving softroader notice and maybe not hit me as well.
That probably makes me an “Old Dude With Some Money Who Is Kinda Batshit,” and I am offended. Old is such an ugly word.
I had the opportunity to take a Prowler home for the weekend on a couple occasions back in my Chrysler days. It was memorable as hell.
From what I remember, they were super fun to drive. Handling certainly was way ahead of anything else in the street rod realm due to a sophisticated double wishbone front suspension, in-board shocks, 50/50 weight distribution, and those big old marshmallow tires.
Goofy looking, absolutely. Those front bumper winglets did it no favors. Although, if someone had just a tiny bit of appreciation for street rod asthetic, the overall shape kinda awesome.
Also, they were most definitely NOT slow by 1999-2001 standards. (0-60 in 5.7 with a 1/4 in 14.3) at least with the 253 HP version of the 3.5. Go look at road tests of the fastest stock 60’s muscle cars and tell me a 14.3 wasn’t right up there with the best of them.
I suppose like a lot of things from the late 90’s, maybe they haven’t aged particularly well in some people’s view.
If only manufacturers had the balls to do something fun once in a while like Chrysler did back then, we would all be better off
I’m still a Prowler fan.
I understand the point of the article but I have a hard time getting past how awful it looks and how mediocre the performance was to get to the part where I respect the moxie it took to put it out there. It was daring, it was unusual, it was weird, but at the end of the day it was also powerfully ugly.
I actually respect the PT Cruiser a bit more. It’s also powerfully ugly, but they took a risk with some real retro/different styling on a mass market vehicle.
I’m pretty sure nothing has ever been put in the back of a Prowler trailer except a substantial collection of crybaby dolls.
Don’t care though. Chrysler built a weird little hot rod just to be a test bed for aluminum production, which at least puts it up there with the Isuzu Vehicross (which had some specialized casting process for the ridged side panels, just because).
*to be obnoxiously pedantic, the 253hp 3.5 was the standard engine from 1999 on, only the 1997 got the 214hp version
Now I strangely want an orange one with a differently colored trailer. Which color would be most shocking to the nervous system when seen paired together? I’m thinking yellow.
Purple
“I can’t think of a single other mass-production car that had an exposed double-wishbone front suspension like that, with fenders that moved with the wheels.”
Panoz Roadster… does that count as mass-produced? I don’t know how many they made…
I think you can still get a cycle-fender Caterham Seven as well…? Again, not exactly mass-produced.
Love the article, the Prowler.
And the prangler!
Really love the Prangler! Like I want to build one LOVE it! Mine would definitely be a soft top though.
Performance, specs, and slushbox aside… these things had (and still have!) so much swagger that none of it mattered. A friend of mine had one for a summer maybe 8-9 ago, and the head turns it elicited were unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
I’ve ridden on public roads in some friends’ crazy cars…. an Alpha GT-R built past 1k whp, sedans slammed so hard the frames threw sparks, a caged semi-pro RX-7 drift car in full livery… nothing snapped necks like that bone stock Prowler just putzing around town.
I have no desire to own one, but I’m happy they exist. I wish we could have more one-off automotive weirdness. Here’s the question: How many of the people that shit on the Prowler own a more interesting car? Not more practical, not faster. Simply more interesting. I’ll bet very few.
I had no idea that was a factory option!! That’s insane to me. I saw one in yellow many years ago with the matching trailer and honestly thought the owner had taken the back half of one and made a custom trailer. I never in a million years would have thought that it was a factory option.
Powerless car with a useless trailer posing as a hot rod without a flathead V8.
The flathead V8 effectively died out as a viable consumer product over 60 years ago. And yet, plenty of hot rods exist without a flat head V8.
And the little V6 was a good engine. The Magnum V8 that Chrysler had wouldn’t have fit under the hood (because, you know, flat head V8 don’t exist) and was a heavy lump of dog shit. It made all of 245 hp and 335 ftlbs compared to the V6’s 253 hp and 250 ftlbs. Oh, and the V6 was all aluminum so it was significantly lighter than either Magnum V8 (5.2 and 5.9) turds.
Bone stock 253 HP Prowlers did 0-60 in 5.7 with the 1/4 mile in 14.3. They weren’t slow.
You could modify the hell out of a flathead and still get stomped by a fat plumber in a Prowler.
Well, this is the article that caused me to finally break down and make an account with the new site…
The Prowler is my favorite car, and I don’t care who knows it. I followed it from concept to release way back before I could even drive. I remember seeing spy photos of the “Prangler” in a car magazine and wondering if the whole square roof assembly could be lifted on and off (I didn’t really “get” car camouflage back then). I was thrilled to see the production version looking almost exactly like the concept car that made the auto show circuit. I got a die cast model of it back then, and it still sits on my desk today.
A few years ago, a Prowler appeared on the used car lot of a dealership near my office. The day I saw it, I stopped after work to drool over it a little bit. An overly-enthusiastic salesman bounded out to me like an excitable golden retriever. He saw me taking pictures and offered to back it out of its parking space to give me a better view. After a few moments, he suggested: “Hey, while it’s out, you wanna take it for a test drive?” I assured him that I was in no position to purchase the vehicle, but he insisted it was no problem. It had rained earlier, so the top was still up when we set off. It felt a little claustrophobic but also very interesting. After a few miles of driving, he suggested pulling over so we could drop the top. We continued on, returning waves and thumbs-up signs from delighted motorists and pedestrians we encountered. And you know what? It was a lot of fun! I’ve never really driven a car with a ton of power, so the V6 that gets so much derision gave me more than enough power to keep a dumb grin plastered on my face the entire time.
I am a one-car man, and the Prowler is wildly impractical as a sole car (I could barely fit my laptop bag into that sliver of space it calls a trunk), so it is not something that I could see myself owning any time soon. Still, every time I see one, I turn into that 10-year-old who just caught a glimpse of that wild purple concept car and can’t help but to give the driver a thumbs-up.
That- is an excellent story! Thanks for sharing, Duke of Kent!
the family business traded for one when i was in elementary school, i still remember my dad picking me up from school in 5th grade. needless to say i felt pretty cool
I am so glad you wrote this article, if only because I had never seen the “trunk” open on a Prowler. Considering I kind of wanted one (though not enough to buy one), you’d think I would have run across that before.
We had a Prowler collector locally. About once a year they bought a new one in a new color to add to the fleet. They were at 6 or 7 when last I knew, which was roughly when Plymouth died. The local paper even did a story with a picture of them lined up.
Now I want to know what happened to them, both the cars and the guy.
This ranks up there with the SSR on my list of cars that I’m glad exist but I have no interest in owning. Unless we’re talking about the SSR I used to see by my office that had those realistic flames painted on the side and an airbrushed mural of Dale Earnhardt Jr on the tailgate. I’m 100% all about that one.
I really have only one memory of the Prowler and it’s kind of weird. I remember that Paul Jr. of American Chopper fame bought one and was super proud of it when it was featured on the show. A quick google search tells me that the Prowler that he owned is available to buy from its second owner.
https://carscoms.com/2001-plymouth-prowler-130435.html
I guess I’m the only one to admit I like it and wish I had one. A guy that owns a pizza place near me has one with a super flashy paint job (pearls, flakes, golds, and stuff).
Nope, I was going to say the same…loved these when they came out and at the time (a long time ago), I wasn’t some old dude…
I was 20 when these came out. Loved the look. The closest I could get to owning one was a plastic model kit (with trailer!). I would love to see some more “out there” designs.
Mazda should do the same with the Miata.
https://www.kbb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/763×430-5ycto-2020-fiat-124-spider.jpg
I meant make a Miata rear end style trailer.
Well, I’ll be damned. It actually looks BETTER with the body off. That’s a really cool-looking chassis!
Can’t remember the specifics, but there was a space issue with cramming a V8 in there. Hoovie had one for a bit, and did some performance mods to it, and seemed to have a blast with it. It’s great for what it is, but I wasn’t the target audience for it, but still glad they made it. Automakers need to do a bit more crazy every once in a while.
I think even moreso than cramming the V8 in there (although the LA V8’s Chrysler had at the time were so close to retirement they all carried around pictures of boats they were going to enjoy provided they weren’t gunned down in the line of duty), a conventional RWD transmission would have taken away too much of the already cramped cockpit.
It was really more that Chrysler just didn’t have a good V8 at the time, the Prowler was supposed to be kind of a statement of purpose that would show off Chrysler’s latest engineering, so cramming in a decades-old V8 that was already in the process of winding down production didn’t really fit with that. The V6 was brand-new and much more current in technology, and it was a lot lighter while making roughly the same power.
You name-drop it towards the end, and this EXACTLY sums up how I feel about the Tesla Cybertruck (CYBRTRK?). It’s not for me, but I’m glad to know something that weird and one-off in its design gets to exist.
Putting the Prowler and it’s awesome trailer in with the Cybertruck really disappoints me.
Well, the Prowler was actually produced. We’re still waiting for the alleged cyber truck.
It’s always funny to me how quick “enthusiasts” are to clown all the prominent retro cars (New Beetle, Prowler, T-Bird, SSR, and especially the poor PT Cruiser). It’s as if their preferred reality is that those cars had been replaced by yet more blandly styled, groupthink vehicles. We had (and have) plenty of those already.
Were these cars the performance leaders in their respective classes? No, and that wasn’t their purpose. For some reason snarky commenters in the 2010s-2020s seem compelled to point out how heavy the SSR was, or how slow the T-Bird was, or how the Prowler had only a V6/auto, as if that made any difference at the time to the intended audience.
EXACTLY
And the PT Cruiser was great, at least according to everyone I have known to own one. And I still want the SSR, if I only had the driveway space for one. I keep hoping that we’ll see bold designs in the EV space, since it’s relatively easy to change up the design you put on top of the skateboard chassis.
And the critics will always be mad that new cars are all the same while simultaneously decrying anything interesting. They have a very specific car in mind that nothing will ever live up to, so they just can’t be happy.
Exactly! Not everyone has FU money for a Porsche or even wants something that fast. Not everything interesting has to be fast and/or expensive. All those cars were great options for people who weren’t necessarily car enthusiasts but wanted something special for a midlife crisis or retirement that wasn’t a Corvette. I was a service runner at a VW dealer right as the newest gen Beetle was introduced, and the vast majority of New Beetles that came in for service were 40-60 year old women that absolutely loved them and either had an original or grew up knowing someone that had one. And that’s great that they had an affordable and practical option to enjoy!
A friend’s girlfriend had a new Beetle. Damn thing was pretty roomy in the back. Comfortable with plenty of headspace. I think it was a little too expensive for the history of the original being a very affordable people’s car, but it was a fine machine.
The new T-Bird had the misfortune of coming out during Ford’s very bad quality control era. It was a nice looking car that captured the feel of an older body style much like the Mustang had. The SSR was a great idea, but I think the design execution was lacking. They designed it from the ground up to imitate the look of a chopped and lowered truck in stead of designing a retro truck and then chop and lower that design. Or maybe they should have made it a retro El Camino.
For me the T-Bird had the same issue as the Toyota Origin and Classic (now those are deep cuts): It has the look outside, but not the inside.
If they had put in an interior that wasn’t just a Lincoln LS in pastel I would probably have a lot more affection for it.
I generally agree with this – I liked the PT, the HHR, and the T-bird, but I have an almost irrational dislike for the Prowler and SSR. I don’t like the way either car looks, and I don’t like the way the Prowler drives. I really wish that Chrysler had made more use of the chassis development of the Prowler, because it could’ve made a great basis for a sports car.
Interestingly, the matching trailer is one of the things I hate most irrartionally about the Prowler. I don’t expect cars like this to be super practical, but I do expect to be able to buy, say, a twelve pack of beer and not have to stick it in the passengers footwell or in their lap to get it home. Even most traditional hot rods had a trunk!
Real talk – what cars even come close to the insanity that is the Prowler? Ram SRT10, maybe? Not really though since it’s a functional vehicle to boot. Hmm…
My Abarth 500 was pretty insane. This is a tough one
As far as cars from mainstream manufacturers:
The first-gen Viper, with its no door handles and wild, somehow better than the concept version styling.
The Autozam AZ-1, the tiny gullwing door kei-car.
Renault Sport Spider, a racy roadster that could be purchased with no windscreen – in fact, one wasn’t even offered until after it was in production for a year.
Chevy SSR is close, since it was less useful as a pickup with the retractable hardtop and the integrated tonneau cover, while also being lower than most other factory pickups.
Crossfire coupe deserves a golf clap here . . . that fastback and the staggered wheel sizes.
I can think of a few from tiny manufacturers that may or may not exist (Caparo T1 and that Dutch car with the cab that leans like a motorcycle). Morgan 3-wheeler maybe?
Scratch that, Renault Clio V6 is the answer. Start with a perfectly practical hatchback and turn it into a wide bodied, mid engined, RWD sports car. End result is something completely senseless but absolutely glorious.
Homologation Specials are definitely list toppers! Great comments everyone. Viper is definitely up there too.
If they had just used the 5.9 instead of the V6 this thing would have been awesome! Or if they had waited a couple years and run a 5.7 Hemi and a 6 speed manual ????????????
The 5.9 was a turd. Why add all the weight of a cast iron V8 (with iron heads!) over an all aluminum V6 that put out similar power numbers and wasn’t far behind on torque.