In the '80s I had a dentist who said he had owned a Delorean. I asked him how he’d liked it, and he made a sucking sound. The styling was awesome, but from what I’ve read they were underpowered. I read an article that said they had a top speed of 109 mph. That’s the book speed of my 95 horsepower '66 MGB.
The Chrysler PT Cruiser, Plymouth Prowler, and the 2002-2005 Ford Thunderbird had nice retro styling. I’m aware that style is a matter of taste, and many people particularly don’t like the PT Cruiser. Still, the styling promised a vehicle unlike the more mundane cars in the makers’ lineups. I’ve read articles on each of these cars that complained that they were underpowered.
I even read an article that said the Porsche Boxster was underpowered. Personally, I don’t think that’s fair. The Boxster was an entry-level Porsche. Previous entry-level Porsches were the Audi-powered 924 and the VW-powered 914. Though I’ve never driven a Boxster (nor a 914 for that matter), I think it was probably an improvement.
I know that most car companies want to make their cars as cheaply as possible and sell them for as much as possible; but they want the price to be low enough so that people will buy them. I think that works well enough for most of their models. But why go to all of the effort to design something ‘striking’ or ‘iconic’ or otherwise ‘special’, and then saddle it with an engine that can’t cash the checks the Design Department writes? Sure, it’s cheaper. Sure, the cars will be affordable to a larger market. Ultimately though, consumers who buy them discover that the performance can’t deliver on their dreams.
They were originally intended to have the Ford Cologne V6, presumably the 2792 cc capable of 150+ hp, but ended up with the 130 hp PRV V6.
I’m one of them. Except for the convertible, PT Cruisers always look like a hundred clowns in pinstripe suits should be piling out. The proportions are all wrong, unlike the Chevy HHR.
The Pontiac Fiero is another example. Lets build an American made 2 seater mid-engine sports car! Great idea! Now lets put an inline 4 cylinder gutless engine in it. Bad idea.
Of course the Fiero had other problems like 20 cars per month catching fire or one out of every 508 cars sold in 1984.
Many of the cars we are talking about were underpowered because of emissions regulations the tech at the time couldn’t keep up with, and CAFE standards that forced car companies to underpower their cars.
Computerized everything has allowed us to have our cake and eat it too, so niw we can have cars with lots of power while retaining good emissions control and gas mileage.
Even ‘Muscle’ cars of the 80’s were underpowered. The fastest Pontiac Ttans-Am in 1980 had a turbocharged V-8 that made a whopping 210 hp. The Camaro base model made 95 hp. The 1981 Mercury Capri turbo made 117 hp. And those early turbo engines were very unreliable.
Aside from that, one of the reasons certain engines are chosen for cars has to do with things like a common platform shared between multiple models which might not accomodate certain engines, or levels of power, or because they don’t want to have the same power in a sedan as in their sports cars for marketing reasons, etc.
Nowadays, though, we seem to have power to spare. You can get a Honda Accord with 300hp, or a muscle car with 700. My little Escape SUV makes 245 Hp and 270 lb-ft of torque - numbers that would have looked good in a Porsche or Ferrari in the 1980’s.
My nephew inherited his dad’s PT Cruiser as his first car. He said he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough since it was downright impossible to get up to a safe merging speed on any freeway.
I’ve owned an MG, Ford Pinto, Mustang w/ 4 cyl engine, Datsun B610, 68 VW bug, and a couple Subarus with the boxer 4-cyl. The Subarus and the MG have been the powerhouses. That is a sad statement.
PT cruisers were just awful cars. Wr were going to test-drive one back in the day, but all I had to do was sit in it and I knew there was no way in hell we’d buy one. Cheap materials, uncomfortable seats with a weird forward-leaning feeling, etc. It only got 18 mpg city with an aenemic 150hp engine. We got out of the thing and left the dealership.
I almost never see them on the road anymore. Lots of much older cars around, but PT Cruisers seem to have vanished. They used to be everywhere. Maybe they just couldn’t handle the Canadian weather.
Magnum PI’s Ferrari 308 GTS Targa made less horsepower than my Escape. It was, however, over 1000 lbs lighter. But it still took 7.3 seconds to go from 0-60. My Ford Escape will do it in 6.9.
This. I rented one after flying to Orange county (CA) back in 2008. After driving it for three days I put gas in the tank before returning it and was astonished to calculate the mileage at 16mpg – not 18 – and I don’t have a heavy foot. My Suburban gets better mileage and is capable of hauling twice the people or 5x the stuff that little Cruiser could.
Funny, I have exactly the opposite impression. The HHR is just shaped wrong in every possible way while the PT Cruiser looks sooo right. Obviously this is a matter of taste and there’s no objective right or wrong answer. At least until we start discussing Azteks or Citroen DSes. Those are not just subjectively bad, they’re objectively BAD.
Not so much in regards to malaise era cars, but thinking of the 90s to early 2000s, I always think of “underpowered” as being where the performance and fuel efficiency don’t line up. A Geo Metro is very low powered, but in exchange gets amazing fuel economy.
To me it was the early 2000s Subaru Outback I occasionally drove which really bugged me. About 150 horsepower in a station wagon, and about 18 city/22 highway in observed fuel economy. It was slow, but also gets terrible mileage! Sure, lots of cars got worse mileage, but at least they had bigger engines and made decent power.
I had a PT Cruiser, a 2001 that I bought new, back when they were still in pretty high demand. I actually found it to be a very comfortable car to drive in, even on long trips – my wife and I took it on a long vacation to the West Coast the year after I bought it, and it was great for all-day drives.
But, yes, it had crappy mileage (maybe low 20s MPG on pure highway driving, 15 or so in the city), and no power. I’d routinely shut the AC off if I had to accelerate on a highway on-ramp. My understanding is that at least part of the issue with the weak engine (particularly in the first few years that it was made) is that, due to the fender design, it had a narrow engine compartment, without any available space for a bigger engine. It also didn’t help that it was based on the Neon (including the power train), but it was several hundred pounds heavier than a Neon.
Anyway, it was a good car, despite that, for about 5 years, and then things started failing on it with alarming regularity; by the time I got rid of it in 2011, it’d had several major repairs done, and was in need of more. I suspect that may be part of why you see so few PT Cruisers still on the road – Chrysler was still struggling to build a car that would last.
IMO the PT Cruiser hasn’t aged well. It seemed cool at the time, but it was very much a product of the late 1990s / early 2000s “retro” fad. I see one now and think “Ha! Remember when we thought bringing back styles from 70 years ago was a good idea?”
I did have a very scary experience in that MG where I went flying off a road at fairly high speeds into a field…sideways most of the time. Didn’t flip. Drove it back to the highway and off I went. Got a clean pair of shorts as soon as I could. Young and extremely stupid 17 year old.
