Goldman:
"I beleive [?] you are being unkind to the Prowler and its
purchasers." I try to be a kind and caring person and I did not intend to
offend the Prowler (please stop sulking in the corner, Prowler) or its
owners and wannabee owners (you may stop sulking, too).
"The Prowler is a "retro" vehicle...or an attempt to rewaken
memories of a past motoring age...in this case the American hot rod. A
Morgan owner should have a natural sympathy for the motivation behind any
attempt of this nature." IMHO, this is the problem and puts the Prowler in
the VW Golf/Beetle and Excalibur category. If you want a hot rod, build a
hot rod. Spend sweaty Saturdays underneath an old Ford, plunk a V8 into the
engine compartment, raise your frustration level by trying to match the
transmission to the drive shaft and wear the scars of skinned knuckles as a
badge of courage. As I recall, very few, if any, hot rods had automatic
transmissions. Again, IMHO, Morgans are pedigreed; their history goes back
to HSF Morgan's initial concept and there is a continuous line of
development. As far as I am aware, Prowlers did not evolve from earlier
Plymouths.
"If we were going to compare a Prowler..the question is to what?"
Why would you want to compare a Prowler to anything? A comparison with a
Morgan, again IMHO, is bound to fail because one is comparing individual
aspects of a complex piece of machinery. Your comparison clearly shows
this. The Prowler (or any car, for that matter) should stand or fall on its
own merits. A comparison between Prowlers and other cars eventually comes
down to the question "is it a better buy?" but car enthusiasts don't always
buy cars for sound economic reasons. If we did, we would probably all be
driving minivans (lots of space and good visibility unless everybody has
one) with a 4-cylinder engine (good gas mileage). Even comparing the costs
of a Morgan and a Prowler is fraught with uncertainties: depreciation vs.
appreciation, operating costs, insurance costs, etc. etc.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, "It might be fun to have one of
these cars, but it has "fake" written all over it." Maybe I should have
said "retro" instead of "fake."
Chuck Vandergraaf
'52 +4
Pinawa, MB
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