Chrysler is an extremely specific corporation. They’ve been on the verge of bankruptcy many times, mostly because of their questionable experiments, but they still stubbornly continue to step on the same rake. They go into streaming, they develop turbine cars, they make a concept with four turbochargers – in general, they do what they want. It’s commendable, of course, but it’s painfully bad for business, because capitalism doesn’t like creators at all, but businessmen.
Nevertheless, this is how Chrysler remains, perhaps to this day. At least, a certain part of his team is still doing who knows what, spending money on whatever their hearts desire. They change the Challenger’s original headlights to headlights from a new model (the Dodge Challenger Shakedown project), build dubious hot rods from Wranglers (the Jeep Quicksand project), for some reason attach four-wheel drive to the new Challenger (the Dodge Challenger GT AWD project) and, in general, nothing particularly useful. they are engaged.
So it’s not surprising that it was Chrysler that rolled out a whole bunch of strikingly controversial concept cars between 1995 and 2005. And Chrysler wouldn’t be Chrysler if it just quietly rolled them back behind the scenes and put them under pressure, like all normal guys do. Oh no, Chrysler has put at least five of these cars into production. One of them was an extremely successful model – who hasn’t heard of the Viper these days? But there was an outright disappointment called PT Cruiser among them.
So, it all started with a modest prototype. The Chrysler Pronto Cruiser was created by Brian Nesbitt. The concept was imbued with the spirit of antiquity: the whole car was made under the influence of the same Airflow and other streamliners, literally living in the spirit of American Art Deco of the 40s. At the same time, it was possible to fit in very modern sports, sharp body lines and aggressive front, typical of almost all sports cars from the USA.
There was also a sliding back roof with carbon fiber elements, as well as an extremely beautiful interior, which, although not inspired by retro themes, was nevertheless executed extremely competently. The accents were placed where they belong, and, overall, everything went very well together in a car called Pronto Cruiser.
But one caveat was that it was far from the forties, and the car was planned for the European market, and therefore the catch was under the hood. A real stand in the form of a linear four-and-a-half liter with a capacity of only 115 horses, developed by Chrysler in collaboration with BMW. In contrast to the highly experimental and aggressive appearance, the emphasis in the power unit was on economy and everyday life. A real ramp from the world of cars.
But perhaps it was the modest engine that convinced the management that the Pronto Cruiser is not so far from going into full-scale production …
Sources: https://www.motor1.com/photos/457834/chrysler-pronto-cruizer-concept / (December 8th, 2010), http://www.carstyling.ru/ru/car/1998_chrysler_pronto_cruizer/
