-
People usually make fun of ugly things. It happens in grade school, it happens in the adult world, and it happens to cars. It's not hard to understand. The neon and pt cruiser are ugly cars. Even if they were incredibly reliable, got 50mpg, had 300hp, and sold for $500, I wouldn't buy either.
-
Pt cruiser has got to be the ugliest car beside the Pontiac aztec and chevy hhrLeave a comment:
-
Won't hear anything bad from me. My best friend in high school bought one when they first came out.
It was an awesome car.Leave a comment:
-
In 13 years of driving them, my 1st gens never had problems with the rest of the car falling apart around me, not even the one I paid $1k for and drove for 5 years never washing it once. With that said, I do feel Neons do better in the hands of enthusiasts who don't treat them like shit, the interior plastics don't hold up to abuse as well as say a Corolla or Civic. The plus to this is the interior pieces are REALLY easy to replace. Cracked upper dash? Yeah, that takes a whole minute or two to swap out. Lower dash cracked? Ooooh, better set aside a whole half hour for that. It took me an entire year to convince myself that replacing my Neon R/T with an E30 wasn't a massive mistake, I still wish there could have been a way for me to keep both.
I would totally rock a GT Cruiser, they accept most of the SRT mods and you can haul a few things in it too, would make a great daily. A shame they didn't get the same beefy T850 trans as the SRT, but the ZF units in the PT turbos seems to hold up even in cars getting into the high 11s in the quarter. I still fail to understand why PTs get made fun of so bad, had a friend with one, drove a few, they aren't horrible for being so upright. Not on the Neon platform though, they share front suspension and a few other things, but PT has a twist-beam rear and a flat rear floor so it could be classified as a light truck to improve Chrysler's CAFE numbers, where the PL (Neon) was always IRS.
I wish I could find the sleeper PT street race upset vid I saw sometime in the last couple weeks..... Make fun all you like but 600whp on stock bottom end is a thing.
Sorry (not sorry), but when I see people on forums centered around higher-end cars ragging on cheap-but-potent stuff they obviously know nothing about (How many of you have actually driven a twin-cam, stick-shift Neon?) it really comes off as little more than arrogant, elitist ignorance. I never got the whole internet car shit-talking thing, it seems some of you gain some sort of sense of superiority from it that I don't understand. A decade-plus of owning those cars does put a chip on your shoulder, and unless you have owned a great car that gets mass undeserved disrespect, I guess one can't expect people to comprehend.Leave a comment:
-
Lol I'll pass on that one. The interior hasn't gone to shit yet on this one. One of the reasons I jumped on a low mileage example.Leave a comment:
-
so at least the seats & shifter are nice while the rest of the car falls apart around you. :)
hey, you know what shares the same platform/engine as the SRT-4?
Bet you could get one real cheap too.
:pLeave a comment:
-
Everyone bitches about the interior, but fails to mention the AWESOME seats. Seriously, the standard seats are among the best OEM seats I have ever spent time in. Neons also have a great cable shifter setup with aftermarket options that make it even better, you'll NEVER have a BMW trans feel that precise, well unless the CAE is that good, I think that is about the only BMW race shifter I have not felt yet, they all have slop. The rear wing and stock wheels are ugly as fuck, but the SRT-4 ACR came with decent 16" BBS weaves.
If I had to replace my daily driven E30 with a non-E30 in this price range, an SRT-4 would be near the top of the list. There's so many deals on them right now, customer at an old job sold his very clean, stock-appearing, adult-owned, reliable, daily driven ~400wph big turbo SRT-4 for $7k-ish, the deal was made by the time I found out or I would have been tempted, such a nice car and I had the cash at the time. I've had four 1st gen Neons, one was turbo with SRT-4 parts, and they were all great, fun, reliable cars that respond well to the plentiful inexpensive mods available for them. 8/10 would own one again.
Last edited by Vincent Brick; 09-14-2016, 09:21 PM.Leave a comment:
-
Steena from the first season of Setup drove one of those. She passed me at Buttonwillow with ease... but I think that may have been driver skill though. Either way, the SRT4 was a fast car.Leave a comment:
-
-
It's weird, I remember seeing Neons everywhere back in the early 2000s (and racing one in NFS: Underground), but now it's like they've all disappeared. Maybe they just didn't survive here in the rust belt?
No hate against Dodge here (I'm a big Viper fan), but I personally would have tried to find a clean gen 5 or gen 6 Honda Accord 5 speed for daily use, though I imagine they aren't as nearly as fun in stock form.Leave a comment:
-
I really like the car. I HATE dodge, and especially neons, but I don't find this to be a neon. I feel it's much better than a neon. 80hp better, to be exact. But yes, not very many people get it. It's actually a really fun car, and for some reason, I kinda like the looks...Leave a comment:
-
I can dig it. I own the competitor's car (a 2003.5 Mazdaspeed Protege) and no one seems to get it either. There's just something fun about a cheap, boosted, good handling car. I have always like the look of the Mazda better but the SRT-4 has quite a bit more power.
If anyone is bored, this is a good read.
http://www.caranddriver.com/comparis...mparison-testsLeave a comment:
-
Most of these i see are beatup piles, at least this one looks nice. Honestly I do hate neons, but ironically like mid 80's-early 90's Shelby Dodges.Leave a comment:
Leave a comment: