Why You Should LOVE America's Most HATED Car - Past Gas #10

today is a little different I don't know if you guys heard a little over week ago now as of this recording James suffered a heart attack so he's fine he's recovering at home he'll be back when he wants to we're gonna give him all the time he needs to get that heart back in operation so for today in the studio with me instead of James I have my two good friends with me we got Joe Weber Hey Hey and Jeremiah Burton hello hello and these two guys they're writers at donut media you might not have ever seen their faces before or heard their voices but you've you've heard their work now let that that's easier to say Joe and Jeremiah have written a bunch of up to speeds and wheel houses and bumper-to-bumper episodes and they're very funny guys they're both sketch comedians mm-hmm just like James it takes two of us to be one humphreys so it'll be a little different I know it's it is a different format but I'm actually pretty excited about it because I wanted to bring another host in here so now you guys will just be battling for that third spot I don't get it this is a tryout all right so today's topic is a car that everyone thinks is horrible but Joe and I did a wall Joe did more research than I I read a 300 page book in one day about it we're gonna tell the untold and honestly underappreciated story of maybe one of the most looked down on cars today the PT Cruiser Jeremiah what is your opinion of the PT Cruiser I don't know much about the car I'll say that the only thing that I had experience with is when I went to high school my history teacher his claim to fame was he was the first PT Cruiser owner in the county of Brevard so and he rocked that thing to school every day he was in the newspaper he had the newspaper clipping they like Florida today came to our school and took a picture of him any he had that in his in his office probably still to this day so that's all I know about the PT Cruiser okay I think that a newspaper doing a story on some guy who bought the first one in the county is a very strange thing but it also shows how big a freaking deal the PT Cruiser was at the time that's really it's like my we get excited now about like the new Supra I came out this week at SEMA there was just tons of them but it pales them to comparison how many PT Cruisers there were at the I think 99 or 2000 SEMA show it's just like a flock yeah I remember there being a lot of hype about it yeah I don't think people at the school I think everyone was kind of like all just great like mr. Murphy got it oh wow you know like they were pretty pumped now I'm looking back on it you're like a little why was I excited so what are you what are your hang-ups about it I just you know I think I was a big Prowler fan you know so I think that's what led me into liking it at first what's guy like oh it's a kind of prowler looking car you know I think they had a spirit of that in it maybe I'm not sure and then they just mass-produced them and then when that happens and then when old people buy them and then they're just not cool anymore so you see it as like an old person's car yeah a little bit yeah it's just like it's PT Cruisers are never in great condition when you see them on the road now but they're still running which is great my experience with the PT Cruiser the only time I've ever been in one wasn't my ex-girlfriends mhm and that didn't end very well she owes I didn't take care of it then so it was like always falling apart and she was always stressed about like fixing it the back end has been like smashed in there's like always at least one brake light out so that's my experience with yeah they're like very you well they don't make them anymore right no they ended in 2010 whoa what yeah they made them for that long oh when was the first one mm uh yes mm yeah so for ten years ten and they sold over a million 1 million 50,000 that's that's crazy to me that a million people were like yeah I want a PT Cruiser yeah that's one in every 300 people in the US but it was sold over 58 countries okay they love him in Japan they love him in the UK I bet the Japanese PT Cruiser scene is bananas yeah there's clubs there's clubs all around the world hmm so people love them for a reason yeah we we know that everyone kinda hates this car and the point of this whole thing is to convince you that it's actually kind of a good car yeah cuz PT Cruisers have a stigma I think it's not a positive image of these cars but hopefully by the end of this episode through this crazy story about how the car came to be we can change your guys's mind so let's get into it in the late 70s Chrysler was hurting the third largest automaker in Detroit was waging a losing war on two fronts on one side was the oil crisis which caused fuel prices in the u.s. to skyrocket the fears earlier in the mid 70s Chrysler attempted to retrofit their lineup with more fuel-efficient engines with mixed success but on top of that Chrysler was fighting an even more powerful enemy Japanese carmakers brands like Honda Nissan and Toyota had seen America's need for fuel efficient cars and delivered them in spades it's also worth noting that American cars at the time particularly Chrysler products just sucked ass the cars might have been big and comfy but the build quality was in the gutter Japanese cars on the other hand were built well and they were inexpensive Chrysler needed a car that could help them recover in a world of high gas prices incompetent foreign rivals Lee Iacocca who had recently been poached from Ford put the plan into action developing the kei car platform a designer at Chrysler by the name of Tom Gale helped bring the design to life the Plymouth reliant and Dodge Aries shared the kei car platform they were boxy and boring no frills but that was exactly what Chrysler needed I'd if you guys have never seen these cars before just think of like a car in your head a mental image of a car mm-hmm probably what it looks like like a stick of butter it's so boring with wheels yeah okay a butter wheel car you know like a LeBaron oh okay yeah but despite they're subdued appearance the Reliant and Aries sold fantastically well from 81 to 88 Chrysler sold 300,000 of these cars a year everyone wanted those butter cars yeah the kei car platform was extremely versatile and could handle a wide variety of car styles you had the Aries sedan the Chrysler LeBaron convertible that's a hot rod a reliant station wagon and eventually the Dodge Caravan minivan the first of its kind the kei car had saved Chrysler and put money back in their pockets it was a total success but solving one problem created another Chrysler now was kind of boring mmm better like me that's my problem yeah you played baseball oh yeah you're right you play bass and baseball right yeah you got hobbies yeah I play bass when I play baseball if I score on I just slap that bass he's not liked by other people long time like bring a bass over yeah after you score on some of Chrysler's brands were more boring than others but without question the most boring was Plymouth I went on the Plymouth Wikipedia page just to get a quick idea of their 80s lineup every kei car was painted a bland earth tone color which kind of embodied the blase nature of the brand at that time [Music] my dad actually had a Dodge Spirit for a little bit which was I think also a kei car we ripped the headliner on that with a fishing pole so that was good so just like no I might ask in there not only was my dad driving a kei car but the headliner also touched his head when he drove so it just really added to the like guys would never fix cuz it's not that much of a problem it's just like ridiculous that you wouldn't just tack it up with something right it's one of those things where like you get used to it it's not a big deal but then like other people see what you're going through they're like oh my god it's really not that bad I just like I use it as a Kleenex sometimes and then you fix it and you're like why the heck did I wait so long yeah this was a constant annoyance around the same time Plymouth's sister company dodge was working on transforming their image and reinvigorating their brand Tom Gayle had since become vice president of design at Chrysler and was approached by Chrysler president Bob Lutz to design a modern tribute to a classic sports car the viper prototype i thought it was the PT Cruiser debuted at the 1989 Detroit Auto Show and soon people were tripping over each other to order one it was powered by a v10 designed with help from Lamborghini who Chrysler owned at the time the Viper went on sale to the public in January of 1992 to much critical acclaim and fear it had no safety features like any luck brakes or stability control which gave it a reputation as a very hard car to drive at the limit didn't even have airbags right no yeah and that's scary too much weight no airbags no no ABS no roof the first one was the convertible no excuses no excuse if you think about it stay in your car I flipped my car and banged my head no excuse bake my head did have roll bars it did have a like not a target op but like the target style like roll bar thing yeah so I mean it wasn't like completely insane it wasn't a complete death trap but right it was still very dangerous mm-hmm and I think there's footage of someone from motorWeek or Motor Trend back in the 80s like spinning one of these things out at like a press day and it's pretty funny you know we would never do that never spin out this car I do want one of these things it was like one of my top dream car right here this perception of the Viper that it was a death trap reinvigorated dodges image as a whole transforming it from a sleepy consumer brand to performance leader overnight Plymouth watching from the wings wanted in on that action so they got to work making their own performance car Tom Gail had a penchant for hot rods he threw out a couple of concepts including the Chrysler Thunderbolt but it was a project by a student at the Art Center College of Design by the name of Douglas Foose also known as chip that really inspired Tom Gail I see how they I see her yeah pretty clear there maybe here's like a chip off the old block yeah it looked like his dad maybe had a chipped tooth maybe he had freckles like chocolate chips hmm chips designed the hemisphere was sleek aggressive and reminiscent of 1930s era hot rods Tom Gail the hotrod enthusiasts he was was super into chips project which reminded him of a 32 deuce Gail himself had a hotted up 32 deuce sitting in his garage Chrysler expanded on chips design and made the concept a roadster instead of a coupe the final product the Prowler concept was radical and fun and unlike any other car on the road it had a sharp angled grille aggressive look and Indy style wheels so this is the concept yeah this is 1993 mm-hmm people love this thing yeah they're like this is this is like the new this is Chrysler rebranding itself and everyone was on board mm-hmm they never gave chip credit design and no way yeah poor chip yeah Chrysler CEO Bob Eden did not allow his designers to use the word retro the prowlers design had to be referred to as heritage styling you know it's different super normal way of describing a car yeah let's just go to the synonyms book but don't told you ever use retro Chrysler wanted to use the car as a vanguard to usher in a new style language for the turn of the new millennium there was another goal for the Prowler besides making a fun corporate hot rod Chrysler's goal with the Viper was to develop new ways to design and build a car for less money and have those techniques trickle down to the rest of the lineup the Prowler would be similar in fact Plymouth wasn't even focused on making money with the cars they just wanted to try new stuff out on a small scale case in point the prowlers construction the two-seater would be constructed with aluminum and composite materials a technique far outside the kei car makers wheelhouse I think I understand it's the trickle-down effect yeah we're gonna build a car and use some of the technology to put it into other more mass-produced cars yeah because if they do it on a small scale there's not as much risk in developing stuff in terms of investment they're not gonna try the same stuff at a huge factory at first because it's all fall apart so they're gonna do that small scale and figure out what works and what doesn't right when it debuted at the 1993 Detroit Auto Show people thought it looked cool but they never thought it would make it to production at the same time Dodge released their second gen Ram it was a major success in part thanks to its radical styling it didn't look like other trucks at the time it was unique Plymouth Gann was inspired by their cooler brother Plymouth's started developing a concept car that had the same Heritage styling as the Prowler but was more economical in practical hmm in 1997 the Plymouth pronto concept debuted debuted sorry it was an affordable fun five-door concept that had visible styling cues from the Prowler mainly the pointed grille and split bumpers it had a roll back fabric roof that was in between a drop-top and a sunroof sorry it had a spacious interior and high roofline and came in a color called cool vanilla which was my nickname in high school the designer K Neal walling sub of this pronto hey Neal walling we studies the driving habits of future first time car buyers and learned that they're interested in a vehicle unlike any other on the road today 16 year olds or what yeah I guess because the pronto had such a high roofline the seats were positioned higher as well giving the driver a tall clearer view of the road this will be important later Jeremiah okay noted this car was heralded as the start of a new brand and one critic said it had instantly recognizable personality when asked about the development of the pronto concept vice president of design at Chrysler John her--let said before setting out to create pronto we gathered guidelines and specs for designing traditional for passenger sedans once we studied all this information we threw it out and built a new vehicle from the ground up for our next generation in 1998 a year later the pronto Spyder concept was released this two-door roadster had a 2.4 liter turbocharged 4-cylinder that made 225 horsepower and looked nothing like the previous concept that shared its name it weighed 2,700 pounds and was designed to mimic small European roadsters even down to the mid-mounted engine whoa yeah I seen this thing you know here's looking it kind of looks like a Porsche and a like an Audi TT kind of yeah little baby I got like Saturn Sky viable mm-hmm Wow that design is not aged well soon after Chrysler debuted the all-wheel drive pronto cruiser concept designed by Brian Nesbitt it was there with a Z yeah I got it no you gotta have the Z in there which tells people it's fun if it was an S that's boring yeah go back to the Rotary Club grandma it was lower and more aggressive than the previous two concepts but this pronto really sold the Heritage hot rod look it was modeled to look like the Chrysler airflow of the 1930s and came with a 1.6 liter inline-4 mated to a 5-speed manual transmission the exaggerated grille and bulging fenders harkens stylistically to the Prowler I never really realized how similar the PT Cruiser would be yeah next to the Prowler meanwhile the production Plymouth Prowler debuted in 1998 and was immediately met with criticism oh sure sure Jeremih people loved the radical styling but the Prowler got flack for only being available with a v6 hot rods historically had big v8s in them and putting a v6 in one was seen as sacrilege didn't feel like driving a hot rod either the suspension was tuned more for comfort than performance so I read a bit on the Prowler too okay and it was like it had a 3.5 liter v6 which did like 225 yeah not too bad yeah but it wasn't like a hot rod and only old people bought it and so they laid into that and they were like okay let's just make it really comfortable to ride no young person can afford this anyways yeah despite the lukewarm reception Chrysler didn't consider it to be a failure of course it was never meant to be a volume car and make money the Prowler was an experiment in the production of aluminum cars they only made 11,000 of these things and while they might have lost money on a project as a whole they gained a ton of on aluminum car construction that would be utilized in future production Chrysler debuted the PT Cruiser at the 1999 Detroit International Auto Show it sparked a lot of interest and by November that year 225,000 people had requested more info on the PT through Chrysler's website which attracted more than 35,000 site visitors a week requesting info does that just mean going to the website does that mean like they are Chrysler that way they could have had a website that had like a click here if you want to find out more information yeah I think it was like signing up for like a newsletter or something which is yeah I mean remember this is 1999 the internet was so much different back then oh yeah and Alta Vista Asheville Meyers the PT Cruiser website actually won a ton of awards included including the coveted golden caddy award and the @d tech award which I was not able to find any and just the website yeah I mean you know like there's industry loves giving itself Awards the @d tech award seems like someone just like with a production model green lint Chrysler kicked their promotion of the PT into overdrive they aimed to stimulate an emotional response in prospective bars emphasizing how fun sporty and stylish the PT was they called it the $16,000 people magnet that's stupid true like people who bought this car have stories of people like doing u-turns on the highway and following them and like taking pictures and like bugging them at gas stations and stuff like when it first came out this thing was huge I believe it's so weird that people just like needed to get more info on it right and 16 grand not bad well what what's that in 2019 let's go to that the old inflation calculator here that would be the same as $25,000 today so like my Impreza yeah yeah all right okay fine a few years earlier Volkswagen had successfully debuted the new beetle which earned respect from even the most hardcore bug fans how would they know that what a claim Chrysler wanted to emulate that mix of nostalgia and excitement for something brand-new with their PT Cruiser by this time though it was known that the plymouth brand was going to be dissolved so the PT was rebadged as a Chrysler so I know this is probably not selling the PT Cruiser but beyond Craigslist after I'm optimistic the PG at one time stood for plymouth truck as Plymouth was trying to emulate the success of the Dodge Ray there are they trying to make it like everything everything yeah you don't look at this car and think truck ever but with Plymouth living out its last days now it stood for personal transit the new PT Cruiser went on an exhausting promotional tour they brought pts to car meets and let fans drive them they made an appearance that that year's Republican National Convention and stop twice college sports games as part of their PT Cruiser tailgates event series great name during a college football game they had this ad called Sol type in Sol PT Cruiser ad where a guy who's about to go to hell buys his soul back from Satan in exchange for his PT he's literally on the elevator down to hell he's like trying to bargain with him and he's like take my shipping company take my mansion whatever seems like nah dude and then he like holds up the keys to the PT seems like okay and Satan gets pulled over by the cops and the cops doesn't know how to pronounce Satan's name is this all in one thirty Seconds oh yeah it's a relapse Joe was not making any of that up sorry Prince of Darkness here's your ID back yeah over this entire period of time Chrysler was strategic about releasing details they let just enough information leak that people were hungry for more and you know what it worked by the turn of the new millennium Chrysler had created a lot of positive buzz around the car and people could not wait to find out what this heritage hotrod Wagon e thing was all about now head of design at Chrysler Tom Gale said that the PT establishes a new standard for combining design and function in one vehicle which is the goal of every vehicle and yet it was the seemingly impossible combination of a tall and stout hot rod which also had a bunch of space this car was trying to be everything at the same time design of the PT was aided by study done in Europe that surveyed customers in countries like France Italy Germany and the UK to assist Chrysler and better understanding the needs and desires of customers around the world so they're building this thing not only to harken back to like an age of America's history with that heritage styling but also appeal to everybody around the world and in a global car yeah which is kind of a weird idea to make it like just the idea of a global car whose styling really only appeals to maybe one country yeah it's kind of weird from inception to construction of the first car Chrysler spent only six hundred million dollars developing the PT Cruiser it's not that much which seems like a lot but for a completely new car developed from the ground up that's not that much considering yeah yeah a good rule of thumb for a large manufacturer is about a hundred million dollars a year to develop a new car much of the technology they were using to develop the car had never been used in that application before something I like to keep in mind is that like Lexus when they were designing the LS 400 they spent 400 million dollars I think developing the v8 engine that they used in that car so just the engine just the engine yeah it took 10 years yeah that car right I think I think it was 10 years I remember when we wrote the LFA script it was it was a long time yeah yeah Chrysler used the system to keep ever involved up to date on everything related to the project engineers suppliers manufacturers and designers were all given access to Keesha or computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application I mean I would have pronounced that Katya Katya acacia Kesha this meant that at any time there is an update or revision everyone in the pipeline was informed Chrysler was the first to use an application like this in vehicle development so it's basically just like a big Google Doc put in layman's terms and anytime like a revision would be done all the manufacturers and engineers and designers would be updated so it wasn't like constant is this the actual like designing of the parts yeah okay so that's called CATIA oh you know it yeah yeah I used to use it a lot when I worked in that field whoa yeah and it's pretty boring stuff but yeah it's just like a 3d design software so they must have been the first use it that like everyone can kind of talk to each other when you're designing parts well now I feel like an idiot engineers and designers also implemented virtual reality and DMA which is a computer-aided design type system to structure the PT and bolster things like chassis strength rigidity and safety these programs were extremely helpful in development as engineers could use virtual reality to assemble components and assure proper fit before a physical prototype was even built everything from the engine to the wiring harness to the suspension was arranged in a virtual setting which allowed engineers to utilize every last inch of space in the PT designers could sit in the virtual PT and experience it from a customer's perspective adjusting and tweaking everything until it's just right this ended up saving Chrysler tons of time and money because they didn't have to keep building new prototypes that's actually super sick in my opinion yeah that's like streamlining the changes because I could imagine how much of a pain in the ass it is to build a prototype no this is wrong and then go expand it build it yeah you just have you have the whole card it's ready to go before yeah all right so cool finally after years of hard work and testing Tom Gail and Chryslers dream had materialized the PT Cruiser was ready for production it had a wheelbase of a hundred three inches stood tall at 63 inches high and weighed just over 3,000 pounds the steep angled windshield and rear meant there was a lot of usable space it was basically a box the tall angled roof fit in with the hotrod aesthetic and seating was higher than in other cars of the same size the rear seats were higher than the front seats kind of like stadium seating I guess since it was raked you could do that yeah it did yeah has that little angle to it how many inches tall are you I'm 6 foot 3 so that's 75 inches so this thing is like a foot shorter than you yeah yeah I didn't realize it was that tall like that's putting it in Jeremias yeah James if James is tall - right 6 - yeah so what do you mean right you know but like tall people don't notice other tall people everyone short yes unless you're a sports player being tall - what I can go to the store and get in something on the top shelf that that's it that's the best thing I can do being tall like there's no advantage to me being tall unless everyone tells you you're tall yeah everyone says I want to ask you did you play basketball and you're like oh yes of course [Music] really good ankle injury all of the seats except the driver's seat folded down thanks to the use of a twist beam axle and Watts linkage when the seats are down it made 64 cubic feet of storage when needed which is on par with a small SUV the standard engine in the US version was a 2.4 liter inline 4 that made 150 horsepower and was shared with the Chrysler Cirrus Dodge Stratus and Plymouth Breeze it had a cast-iron engine block with aluminum cylinder heads dual overhead cams and 16 other markets got a 2-liter version of the inline four that made 140 horsepower that's hilarious a point four liter Inc decrease only meant of 10 horsepower difference well one of them is the European one the 2-liter one mm-hmm and so like for the US they they kind of like ran into problems with cafe standards like emissions the interior had a unique style as well that a four-spoke steering wheel reminiscent of 1930s era cars deep set gauges color matched dash panels and a cue ball style shifter I've always wanted one of those in my car although it didn't look much like a truck the PT Cruiser was designated as a light truck in order to pass stringent emission so they have trucks have different yeah emission standards that they have to meet there they have like lower standard so if it was like a compact car say it would be held to a higher standard for emissions but how do you get away with classifying it as a light truck though what is the what's the standard for that ah I'm on diesel hub calm right now did shout out to diesel hogs calm looks like anything under six thousand pounds will be a light truck and this thing was like three thousand pounds so technically we're all trucks everything was going great for Chrysler with the development wrapping up all they needed to do was figure out how the hell do we build this thing which is where we'll pick up next week on passed gas so you guys started this to try to convince me and in the process D convince Lisa so thanks for listening follow donut media on instagram and twitter at dunno media follow me at nolan J Sykes follow Joe at dark underscore webinar follow me at Jeremiah Burton very original if you thought there are a lot of supras at SEMA this week you ain't seen nothing yet PT Cruisers were the belle of the ball for years we're gonna go over all the special editions of this car which is actually where the it's where the PT shines yeah and I'm excited to show you something I'm excited to hear I hear there's a guy who spent $100,000 on one I'm excited all right so join us next week on passed gas thank you for listening I love you the blase nature of the brand at that time yeah there's no cause like there are no cool colors but ER yes it was butter at various stages of like decay no not just not a good look of the point

Channel: Donut Podcasts

Views: 71,938

Keywords: pt cruiser, pt, cruiser, chrysler, chrysler pt cruiser, dodge viper, viper, plymouth prowler, prowler, plymouth, past gas, past gas podcast, podcast, donut media, donut, donut podcast, donut media podcast, james pumphrey, nolan sykes, hated car, car, american car, pt cruiser gt, pt cruiser turbo, pt cruiser review

Id: cVy94wY9gBc

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020