Another Chrysler Blast From The Past, For The Future...

In the Summer of 1989, I was a California State Jr. Life Gard, sitting at the entry kiosk to Huntington State Beach waiting for my mother to come pick me up after a day of practice. I was thirteen years old, and my interest in cars was at that point supplementary to my interest in warplanes, birds, and -a slightly newer interest- girls. I had plans to enter the Air Force, I spent weekends traipsing through back country on bird watching hikes, the girls... well, that was going to take some time to work out.
It was an afternoon in July, and I had gotten bored of talking to the park aide on whom I had a slight crush (it really was going to take some time), so I sat down with an issue of Car & Driver, my first. Inside was a review of an auto-show (I think it may have been Detroit, but I'm not sure.), and at that show was a concept that would help for my idea of what a sports car should be.

The Plymouth Speedster was tiny, tiny like I didn't know cars could be. Its length was only 130", its wheelbase a faintly ridiculous 81.7". It had no top, and really no windows. Its interior was made mostly of wet suit material and the designers theorized that the cockpit would simply be washed out with a hose along with the body. There wasn't mention of a motor (the concept didn't have one), but the blurb did say that the car would attempt to combine the virtues of cars and motorcycles, so small and high-winding were definitely in the cards, as well as a mid-ship mounting position.

There were three problems. One: Gas was as cheap as it had been in a decade, and was on the way down. Two: The name Plymouth meant nothing to the Speedster's target audience, except old men, pipes, slippers... even the Barracuda and Roadrunner were long forgotten. Three: There was another concept car from Chrysler Corp. at that show, one that would go on, courtesy of Maximum-Bob Lutz, to become the last American Muscle icon. You guessed it, the speedster was sharing floor-space with the original Viper, the one with the metal side-pipes.

So the speedster was shuffled loose the show-stand coil as quickly and quietly as it appeared. In some ways I think that was the end of Plymouth. Knowing that they had no clout with the youth market and only a rapidly aging demographic on which to depend for sales, Chrysler let the brand slip into obscurity and eventually decay. Years later, Plymouth would give excitement one last try with the pretty, but ultimately hamstrung Prowler. Instead of trying to energize the youth of America with cheap fun, the car attempted to appeal to aging pre-boomers by looking like the hot rods they had built as teenagers and twenty somethings. It didn't work, and Plymouth was dead a shortly after.

It's not quite the end of the story, for as they always seem to, Chrysler presented another shot at the concept many years later. It was based on the Smart car, which Chrysler was able to obtain through the link-up with Daimler. Called the Slingshot it came complete with several things the Speedster had forgone, such as a roof, and windows. In essence it was the same concept, this time repackaged around readily available mechanicals. Gas though, still wasn't high enough for America to abandon its love affair with the V8, and so the Slingshot went the way of all American small sports cars since the Crosley Hotshot, which, come to think of it, may have started the rebuke of such cars in the first place...