![]() And at $9,457 ($19,277 today), Car and Driver says, the Neon was $850 cheaper than the cheapest four-door Saturn. All of these cars had weights close to each other, too. A Volkswagen Golf made 115 HP, and even the hot Honda Civic Si made 125 HP. The Nissan Sentra put out 110 HP unless you got the SE-R, which netted you 140 HP. But you have to look at what else was on the road in 1993.Ī Saturn SC1 made 85 HP while the SC2 made 124 HP. In today’s world–where regular family cars can easily sneeze out 300 HP–that’s nothing. And you could get your Neon as a coupe or a sedan, which weighed in at roughly 2,400 pounds. The Neon came with a 2.0-liter four making 132 HP, with an option to get 150 HP in the R/T. ![]() Pick any two.’ We refuse to accept that.” Then Chrysler President Bob Lutz said: “There’s an old saying in Detroit: ‘Good, fast, or cheap. ChryslerĪnd the Neon was more than just cute, inexpensive, and fun. It was a bold take on the standard small, entry-level sedan formula, and while the production version stripped away all the really weird two-strokey, trash-compacty stuff, the end result still captured the fun essence of the concept. ![]() The Neon started life as a fairly bonkers 1991 concept car with a two-stroke engine, four sliding doors, and a freaking onboard trash compactor. I think this little paragraph about the concept and the production version sums it best: And yet, through the damage you could still see the kind face of a car that Dodge once marketed simply by saying “Hi.” DodgeĪs our Jason wrote back in 2019, these cars are way cooler than they appear at first glance. But such is the life of many inexpensive cars. Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth put roughly 2,224,000 Neons on the road between 19, and many of the survivors continue to live a life of cheap transportation. Despite crumbling rust, peeling paint, and all kinds of dents, these cars still got classmates to school. It was common to see a Neon in my high school’s parking lot, and those cars would usually be used up and beaten down. Whenever something makes me conjure up memories of the Dodge Neon and its Plymouth twin, those memories take me right back to high school. It looked like a teenager’s first car, but was fast enough to shame the competition. This was a car that was just a cage from being track-ready, and actually quick around a circuit. Jason reminded me that the Dodge Neon ACR was once a thing. Automotive history is full of Holy Grails, and today we have another. This morning I found myself marveling over how much you readers love stories of rare versions of regular cars.
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