Hungarian Hot-Rod

There's a bizarre car around town. It's quite rare and I've seen it maybe 3 or 4 times. The last time being a few days ago and I remembered to whip out the phone and take a pic.

I was in a rush and forgot to get close enough to see what the make and model was. I remember it from some magazines or TV programs a few years ago so knew it was a production model from one of the big American companies and not some cottage industry car.

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Looking around on the net for cars that look "like a car from ZZ top", "dragsters" and finally "hot-rod" brings up the information that tells me it's a Plymouth Prowler (aka the Chrysler Prowler). In fact, there's a test drive article in Hungarian over at Totalcar (*).

Its appearance is so wacky and out of place on the road that I love it. Imagine seeing it in your rear-view mirror and you could be mistaken that you're having a close encounter of the third kind as aliens make their way down to their weekend house at Balaton. I'm not sure who has the money to really "play" with their cars but it seems that Hungary has some people out there willing to do so. I salute them.

Sadly, Chrysler replaced the futuristic Prowler with the muscled but more mundane Crossfire.

In 1998, the people of Tusla, Oklahoma thought the car was good enough or weird enough to bury a purple Prowler in a time capsule along with the City of Tusla financial report, some restaurant menus and a case of Weber's root beer. Perhaps the Prowler's styling will be standard enough for it to be more of a sales success when they dig it up in 2048.


* After writing this, I remembered that Mr Kzamm is connected with Totalcar. After a quick look at his site, I see that he's already covered the Prowler in his "When corporations build hot-rods" article. Sorry for the lack of originality. But it doesn't stop it being a weird-but-cool car.

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