PT's Place in the Universe

[Kirby]

I was reading an article today on the SRT-10 and the Viper R when the question of relative importance struck me. I wonder what the expectation of PVO for the PT owners. Possibly just a bunch of cranky geriatrics that won't spend that much in their area anyway. There are plenty of twenty-year-old stock clerks at the corner grocery store that squirrel away pennies to buy Stage I and beyond upgrade parts for their SRT-4 to make the planners feel like this project is a success. Plenty of nieve owners of new automobiles that trust Chrysler like a parent to save them in the face of written legal statements to the contrary. "More testosterone than common sense" is a phrase that comes to mind.
I also work with one of the "big" companies, and know that the way to climb the ladder is to develop a successful "project". A lot of these projects are pushed and resisted internally for reasons that have nothing to do with the success of the company, or providing a better product/service.
We may never be privelaged to know what is really going on. Anyone that doesn't realise that the PVO reps that periodically come on this site are hobbled in what and how they communicate must be fantasizing. Since I have invested in this PT-GT project I am biased to its success, but know full well that DC could pull the plug on the PT (or Chrysler) at any time.

Just my thoughts.

[dgc333]

I saw a recent article in Autoweek that discussed some of the projects being worked on by Chrysler (with pictures). They had a 300+ hp turbo PT that was a 2dr hardtop based on the upcoming vert PT. It had extensive ground effects, 20" tires and a big wing on the back deck lid and to me looked more like one of the Honda Civics you might see in the Fast and Furious. They also showed a similar 2.4 turbo Stratus sedan (not the 2dr, likely because the 2dr is Mitsubishi based). Whether these make the light of day who knows but they had rolling running hardware and refered to the Stratus as the SRT-6.

Also, the PVO group's charter is to make low volume nich versions of vehicles like the STR-4, SRT-10 and the SRT-10 Truck not upgrades and parts. They are not the ones responsible for the Stage I upgrade for the SRT-4 and PT GT. Mopar Performance is seperate business unit within Chrysler with it's own P&L requirements, they are the ones that are offering the Stage I upgrade.



Mopar Performance certainly used what the PVO group has learned about the turbo 2.4 and likely had them do the engineering work, but it's MP that responsible for it seeing the light of day. What MP sells may or may not be made/designed by DC, it comes from whom ever can provide what they want. For example the small block V8 crate motors are built from DC manufactured blocks and heads but the actual engines are assemblied by either Catipillar or Arrow Racing Engines. The big block and Hemi crate motors are re-engineered blocks because all the original tooling was destroyed and most of the engineering drawings were gone too.