Present tastes are often a shunning of the near past, mixed with a sudden embracing of a slightly older past. This is most notable in fashion, where the ’90s have made a comeback. Curiously, apparel seems to lag automotive, which embraced Clinton-era cars years ago and is moving on to Litwood, post-9/11 appreciation. So what’s the vehicular analog of the sudden reemergence of bucket hats? The PT Cruiser, if you’ll believe it.
Your reaction to this news will undoubtedly age you. If you were older when the little, retro-styled economy car came out you might be pleasantly surprised. If you were young when the PT Cruiser first debuted, you’ll probably be horrified and want to argue that the PT Cruiser cannot be cool again because it was never cool in the first place. If you’re young enough to read Blackbird Spyplane, well, you might love the PT Cruiser.
Why The PT Cruiser Exists
Since approximately 1970 until now, the company that happens to own Chrysler does not know what to do with Chrysler and has to invent some sort of Hail Mary play to save the brand. First it was the K-Car, then the Minivan, then the Dodge Neon. By the time that it became legendary automotive exec Bob Lutz’s turn, the company was yet again adrift.
What would be the solution to Chrysler’s marketplace woes? To get the answer, Lutz turned to a French medical anthropologist and psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Clotaire Rapaille. His whole schtick was getting corporations to tap into their customer’s lizard brains because carbuying, obviously, was not a wholly rational pursuit. This line of thinking would inevitably led to automakers building SUVs with high beltlines and no visibility, but for Chrysler it meant the PT Cruiser.
The PBS feature program Frontline did a great episode on Rapaille called “The Persuaders” and have an interview with him that’s instructive:
When I start[ed] working with Chrysler, they told me: “We have done all the research. We have all the questionnaires and focus groups and everything, and we know Americans don’t want cars anymore. They want trucks; they want big SUVs; they want minivans. They don’t want cars.” And I told them, “I think that maybe you are making a mistake here, because you listen to what people say; I don’t.” So I suggested to Chrysler: “Let’s do some kind of work the way I do this. Let’s try to break the code, understand what is the code. What I believe is they are not buying cars because you’re not delivering the reptilian car they want, but if you find out the reptilian code for car and you make a car, you create a car like that, you’re going to sell it.”
So we did this kind of work. We went back to the first imprint. The result is the PT Cruiser. The PT Cruiser is a car [that] when people see it, they say, “Wow, I want it.” Some people hate it; we don’t care. There is enough people that say, “Wow, I want it,” to make a big success. And then when we tested that, and we say, “How much will you pay for this kind of car?,” people say, “Oh, we’ll pay $15,000 or $35,000.” You know that when you have a product where people say $15,000 or $35,000, the price is irrelevant.
What is it that make[s] the PT Cruiser a reptilian car? First, the car has a strong identity. What people told us is that “We’re tired of these cars that have no identity. I have good quality, good gas mileage, good everything else, but when I see the car from a distance, I have to wait till the car gets close to know what it is, and I have to read the name.” When you go to see your mother, she doesn’t need to read your name to know who you are, you see? We want this reptilian connection. And so this notion of identity, absolutely key, was very reptilian for a car.
My actual favorite description of this is from an NY Times article on the doctor:
Missing from the driveway on this particular autumn morning are Dr. Rapaille’s PT Cruiser, the model he helped Chrysler design, with a masculine exterior fit for Al Capone and a feminine interior to satisfy any mom.
Here’s a very recent video of Dr. Rapaille talking about Artificial Intelligence:
Of course, the good doctor is not a designer. The actual creation of the car can be credited to Bryan Nesbitt, who worked with Lutz and Rapaille to make the car.
There were three concept cars that preceded the production vehicle, all called Pronto. There was the more European and modern Plymouth Pronto. A mid-engined dead end called the Pronto Spyder. And, finally, a radical, Foose-ian extravagance called the Pronto Cruiser Concept.
That last car, ultimately, is what became the PT Cruiser, and it was destined to became a hit. Just not a hit in the way anyone expected.
What Is A PT Cruiser
With Plymouth dead, the PT Cruiser became the Chrysler PT Cruiser. I don’t know that I’d call the PT Cruiser a bad car, but it’s far from a good car. While not actually a Dodge Neon, like most Chryslers, the front-engined, front-wheel drive car shared a few parts with its bubbly economy stablemate. International markets also got the Neon’s 2.0-liter naturally aspirated fourbanger. In the United States, however, we were treated to a 2.4-liter four-cylinder with a whopping 150 horsepower, with an optional five-speed manual.
A PT Cruiser is immediately identifiable by its massive, pontooning fenders and aggressively scowling headlights. The car looks like James Cagney screaming “I made it ma! Top of the world!” in gangster flick “White Heat.” It’s a ridiculous vehicle. You can’t even call it a car because Chrysler tried to pass it off as a truck to skirt fuel economy standards.
What differentiated the PT Cruiser and Neon was not performance or technology, but 300 pounds of vintage style in a 10-pound bag. Here’s how Tony Swan of Car And Driver described it back in the June 2000 issue:
Still, stir as you might, you’re in no danger of rocket-sled face distortion when you mash the pedal to the floor. In this sense, the Cruiser’s hot-rod look is out of step with performance reality. Chrysler insiders say there’s likely to be a turbo option in the Cruiser’s not-too-distant future. But for now the emphasis is on cruisin’ and lookin’ cool.
On the other hand, the Cruiser is surprisingly adept on snaky sections of back roads. Body roll is well-controlled, particularly in view of the relatively high center of gravity; the power rack-and-pinion steering is nicely weighted, with better-than-average road feel; and the damping rates are well-selected for keeping the tires in contact with the surface, even on sections of washboard gravel road.
I like to think Swan absolutely dumped this beast on the rickety gravel farm roads on the outskirts of Ann Arbor back in 2000. Eventually, the PT Cruiser would get a Michael Scott-approved convertible and an actually quick turbo version with the 230 horsepower motor shared with the SRT4 Neon.
Why Millennials Don’t Always Love This Car
I was 17 when this car came out, which makes me an Elder Millennial. While I didn’t hate the way it looked, it immediately felt old to me. It’s the “mom jeans” effect. While I get how high-waisted denim works well with certain body types, the preponderance of the look among actual moms I grew up with has changed the context with which I view the look.
When the car debuted it was not young people who flocked to the PT Cruiser in great numbers. It was actual people above the age of 40!
I found an old press release from PT Cruiser that actually included the demographics, and check out the median age:
Gender: 46 percent male/54 percent female
Median Age: 51
Median Annual Household Income: $58,000
Education: 18 percent college educated
Household: 70 percent married
So, your typical PT Cruiser owner was a bank teller in their 50s. That’s how I remember it. It’s not like I dislike the cars, it just means something else to me.
Why Young People Seem To Like The Car
This article has been sneaking up on me for a while. I think it started when Jason mentioned that his son Otto wanted a PT Cruiser as his first car. His dad’s a weirdo, and a car nerd, so that sort of tracks. Then I started noticing the PT Cruiser more on Instagram and, yeah, even TikTok. There’s a young woman on the platform that’s documented her life with the car. Also, they seem to be really popular in Japan:
And whatever this is.
Just today, local weekend boy Rob Spiteri brought up that his 12-year-old sister told a group of friends that “Everybody should drive a PT Cruiser Convertible.”
My assumption is this is somewhat ironic, in the same way that clamshell iBooks and other Y2K aesthetic signifiers have suddenly rocketed back into our lives. I reached out to Syd, from OHOAT, as both a certified young person and also an individual with a good read on weird culture.
“I think it’s satire, but also they genuinely like it,” Syd told me, before adding “Which is weird, because the cars are absolute pieces of shit.”
LOL.
Our own Mercedes Streeter had a similar line.
“I cannot explain why other people like the PT Cruiser, but I love them (and the HHR) because in my eye, it showed a time when Chrysler and Chevrolet weren’t so boring.” Indeed, say what you will about the PT Cruiser (or GM’s clone, the Chevy HHR), They are not boring.
Thomas Hundal followed suit.
“Young people are enjoying PT Cruisers as a semi-ironic fashion statement,” he said in Slack. “The 20-year cycle means the early aughts are where nostalgia’s at right now…. except for that one year where everyone got weirdly into chants. Juicy Couture, Von Dutch, wired headphones, early iPods, CDs, compact digital cameras, all of that’s now fashionable again.”
Well, now I have to:
So, there you go. Semi-ironic appreciation that becomes regular appreciation. I was into swing music when I was 15, so I am not going to judge.
It’s more than irony or what’s fashionable. It’s akin to seeing someone on the train playing a Gameboy Color on their way to work. Despite all that’s changed, it’s good to see that someone is keeping the memories alive in some small way. Especially when that thing is as reliable as a deadbeat dad on Super Bowl Sunday. Long love the little “light-truck”.
Duke of Kent nailed why I don’t like this car. I won’t knock any manufacturer for trying something different, and I don’t have any bad blood toward retro styling in cars (though it’s hard to get it right). This car might have pulled off the styling if it had been released by itself. But it wasn’t. It was hyped up as the 4-door successor to the Prowler.
The Prowler captured imaginations. It was nicely done and people liked them. A home run (stylistically). The promise of a 4-door Prowler was worth waiting for. It was easy to imagine sliding the Prowler cockpit forward to make room for more seats (or simply stretching the body limo-style). But what arrived wasn’t that. It didn’t resemble the wedge-shaped Prowler at all. It was a squashed-up, amorphous jellybean of a car. More resembling its own era than the era it was supposed to imitate. And retro styling was its hallmark, it didn’t have any other noteworthy selling points. It was basically a Neon with ~25% added to the cost. Given the abundance of hype prior to the car’s release, and the way it utterly failed to live up to the Prowler’s legacy, that extra 25% premium always felt like a rip off. If you want a cheap car with Chrysler build quality, you’re better off buying the Neon and saving the difference to pay for your inevitable drivetrain failures.
Fresh on the heels of a home run, Chrysler swung at the ball and this time they missed.
And, to add insult to injury, they discontinued the Prowler at almost the same time. From my perspective, they said “We’re taking away that cool car and giving you this lame replacement. We think nobody will notice.”
They might have pulled it off, if they hadn’t hyped it so hard as a Prowler replacement.
The PT Cruiser is the automotive equivalent of Brawndo. It’s got what plants crave! But nothing for us actual humans. There’s a reason you hardly see any of them on the road any longer. You’re far more likely to see really old Corollas and F-150’s tooling around on the roads than an old PT due to the powertrains being machined at the factory by a guy nicknamed “Shaky” and QA by Mr. Magoo, and thus they grenaded themselves at an alarming rate.
I actually see way more of them than the same era F150’s. even though they sound far more of the Ford piles. the issue in the early 2000’s was the ford looked like a terrible blob, and the spark plugs liked to shoot out the heads, not to mention the Triton 5.4 version tending to fail inside of 100K due to poorly designed cam phasers and timing chain systems. I don’t see Corolla’s, because they are bland and boring and in the end completely invisible even though they likely are still kicking. Nobody can fault Toyota for longevity and willingness to put up with no maintenance.
I’m weirdly annoyed that you got Idiocracy exactly backward. The whole point of Brawndo in Idiocracy was that “it’s got electrolytes!” Which are basically salts & various minerals that humans literally need to live & sports drinks specifically have because we sweat them out. The idiocy of Idiocracy wasn’t Brawndo having electrolytes, it was putting electrolytes on the plants, which was literally salting the earth over time so nothing would grow.
Sorry to be the “well, actually” guy today, but I just needed to geek out for a moment. Carry on!
But then why do the plants crave it?
I was told I could use PT Cruiser seats to replace the garbage aftermarket seats the PO had welded into my Scout when I got it. I went to the junkyard and had scores of PT’s to choose from for parts. The advice was legit; the seats bolted right in, and are quite comfortable for long-distance driving. In my experience most of the PT’s were built with gray cloth upholstery, and only a select few made with dark gray (which is what I wanted). I had to wait several years for one to show up locally, and then I grabbed it. That’s about the only use I have for them. And they can still be found in great numbers in the yards.
Such an interesting read and this is why I really love the Autopian. It made me fall into the Dr. Clotaire Rapaille rabbit hole (yes, there is a one, and its quite a big one) and now know how Nestle introduced coffee in tea-loving Japan.
Well, I guess that I am off to that rabbit hole as well. Time to learn some knowledge!
Much like the New Beetle, the design and implementation of a “retro” body onto an existing platform required compromises that in many cases severely affected serviceability. I recall that timing belt replacement was significantly more difficult than on the equivalent Neon.
I did the timing belt on mine and yeah it was tight, but not prohibitively so.
I remember thinking the PT Cruiser looked kinda neat in a retro way when they first appeared. I’ve always liked the HHR more. I recently saw a HHR SS in my local Home Depot parking lot. That definitely lit up my reptilian brain. I peeked in the driver side window and sure enough it was a manual. I was hoping the owner would show up while I was looking at it just so I could congratulate them on daily driving such a cool-looking machine.
The PT Cruise was actually kinda cool until Daimler got their grimly little hands on it and redesigned the interior to replace the interesting retro bits with the same fake aluminum playskool quality dashboard as the rest of the Chrysler/Dodge lineup.
Daimler’s treatment of Chrysler was arguably the most cynical of any in the modern automobile industry. It was as if every corporate decision was a reflection of Daimler executives’ negative stereotypes about American cars.
The Chrysler is silent.
So I guess this is a reveal your age article, so I’m old enough to BE one of those who bought a PT Cruiser. I had a family (grown and gone now), living where a smaller car would be beneficial but still had to fit us all, and not too expensive. After looking and looking at all the lightly used cars available (new was more than I wanted to pay, and what nut buys a new car with little kids to trash it), it turned out a PT Cruiser was the prime candidate.
Was it a good car? Well, for a couple of years it was, adequate. All four fit well, Being tall I could sit in it without being hunched over, and with the hatch and fold down seats, could haul a surprising amount of stuff. Very basic interior, as was the whole car, but adequate.
Was it fast, handle well? The 2.4 was anemic for its size (no turbo), and the handling was stable but I wouldn’t take it at higher speeds in a twisty if you have any sense.. Over all, not a bad appliance car.
Then it blew its auto tranny while the family was 250 miles from home. Ran great up to that moment, then bam! $$$.
Knew this was bad due to previous experience with a Voyager tranny, but put a rebuilt in it as it wasn’t going to tow 250 miles, and we needed a car.
Family splits but I was still paying the bills after they move 2000 miles away (amicable,they moved back to their home state), and ex blows the rebuilt tranny. I paid for another tranny. This time it held up, and a granddaughter drives it at college (pray for her).
Now, I love that folks think it’s a funky looking vehicle with lots of quirks, just like I did when I bought a heavily used Volvo 140 when I was a youth. Long live the desire to take these oddballs and keep them going.
I know this is a long post, but I can please ask one thing, that the bashing of different generations stop? Look, I get it, “they made so many mistakes, they ruined my possibilities,” but it’s like this every generation gap. I’m from what I call the “lost generation,” those at the back of the boomers but not young enough for the next. We didn’t get to experience the great benefits of being a “boomer,” the malaise era was starting when we were just getting to drive in the 70s, single income families started to disappear, and basically all that good time money, growth and profit was fading when the earlier boomers got to have to thrive in it following WW2. If we all just agree that we’re here to enjoy the car culture, who cares what gen made what, enjoy it and share the love of old and new.
It’s time now for my meds, so peace out, groovy, and whatever cool phrase is out there now. Is that kids out on my lawn, Dammit!
I’m with you, bro. I’m down for peace, love and talking about cars.
Honestly, if the hate is still going to come, I suggest it be directed at the Pontiac Aztec.
Narrator: The PT Cruiser was in fact, not, cool again.
Octopus NOPE.
It was genius of design in the commercial and functional sense if certainly not in the artistic one. It might have looked like a generic “antique” toy car sold at a Dollar Store with the build quality and acceleration of a short-lived microcar, but it made an economy shitbox sell in massive numbers by appealing to boomers’ insatiable sense of nostalgia and bargain hunters who needed some practicality.
I don’t know if it’s cool in the traditional sense so much as I suspect the kids like them because they’re cheap enough to afford to buy and repair in this market as well as possessing the typical appeal with young generations for a cheesy stand out that predates their birth (or at least their cultural awareness) that I don’t know the term for. It’s sort of like a nostalgia for a time never experienced, but more of a wink-nod irony than sentimental endearment. My generation had Pacers and Gremlins and the like—they weren’t cool so much as a humorously aggressive rejection of cool, though often rooted in the owner not having the means to afford something better. It was a way of proudly owning their lack of resources by embracing iconic cheap crap rather than being ashamed. It was that image that mattered, not the car or its quality itself.
So my top 3 PhD dissertations/scientific papers of all time (I swear this is relevant!) are:
3) How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop? (Okay, technically it was about designing a machine, with tongue analog, to test it)
2) A mathematical model describing how earbud cables get tangled (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/physicists-finally-explain-why-your-earphones-are-always-tangled)
1) A mathematical model that explains the existence of Hipsters, AND why these non-conformists all look alike* (https://www.vice.com/en/article/78xepx/the-math-behind-the-hipster-effect)
*In short, Hipsters don’t actually react against what is currently popular, they react against what USED to be popular.
Tell me more about this tongue machine of yours…
Ehhhh…I kinda think the PT Cruiser is growing on me. I still don’t think they’re cool, though…I just think I’m beginning to appreciate that they actually weren’t that bad and there’s still a surprising number of them on the road. Which, crap build quality or not, points to these things being fairly rugged vehicles.
I remember the first time I ever saw a PT Cruiser. I was 10, and it was gold with the faux-wood paneling, parked next to our van in a lot. I remember remarking to my dad how ugly it was, only to see the owners of said Cruiser walking up to us. They were boomers, in their 50s, and wildly proud of their new Chrysler. I saw that car regularly for the next 15+ years, and as the years went by, the gold Cruiser wore its mileage like battle scars.
An acquaintance’s mom had one as well, a blue turbo convertible. I recall she had repeated issues with the turbo not cooling properly , but otherwise it was a decent machine.
Owned a CPO one that was about a year old, and the only regret I really have was not buying the GT for a few grand more (I guess, in fairness, that was 20% more at a time when I didn’t have that much extra money). It was a pretty well designed car, just not a particularly well built one (but having an extended warranty came in really handy there). It had a number of nice little features, like the cargo cover that could be set up as a table to tailgate, but the best was that the rear seat folded in a 60-40 split flat the correct way (with the 40 behind the driver, not the passenger) and the front passenger seat folded forward to be flat, and basically the same height as the armrest, so it made a big, long, flat cargo area. So you could have two people sit in the car (kind of) comfortably and load a ton of cargo on the passenger side. Made it great for a trip to Ikea (other than it leaned sideways a bit from all of the weight of the boxes being on one side. Why the hell all cars aren’t set up this way, I have no idea.
Yeah, I always enjoyed the minivan-like versatility of the rear seating in those. My wife and I did a roadtrip in one and decided to buy a desk, and were delighted we could fit it in the back (with our luggage) for the long drive home. If they’d put a better motor in it from the start and refined the design more over time, I think people would still be buying it today.
That Plymouth Pronto design would make a halfway decent entry-level EV for Chrysler. The shape looks fairly aerodynamic, it has the upright seating position that CUV buyers love, and it looks just different enough without being too weird.
I had one of these as a hire car when I visited the US on a work trip about 2005. I was fairly neutral to it – better than the Cavaliers I normally got but noisy, the light grey interior was very 1997 and a Lego set felt less plasticky. But every colleague I met, from whatever demographic, from admin to CEO, laughed at that car. And not in a ‘that makes me happy’ kind of way. I was amazed how such a meh car could get such a strong reaction from people who had never commented on a car before.
I’m a millennial. My 80 year old grandmother has a 11,000 mile pt. I like it. Still think they are neat for what they were. I liked them as a kid and I like them as an adult
gen-x here. I never really understood the hatred towards the PT. I thought it was at least as interesting as the audi TT when it first came out. Never had one because early aughts Chrysler, but it stood out for the time.
Agreed on both. Also, nice username
Same, I didn’t realize until very recently we’re supposed to hate the PT. Why? At least they tried something different. That imposter French guy is a fraud but he did have a point.
I’m an elder Gen Z, and thus have always been smack dab in the middle of thinking the PT Cruiser is either cool or uncool. I have been surrounded by millenials who think of it as the least cool car of all time, and in high school the other car guys jumped on the PT Cruiser hate bandwagon. But I always thought the PT Cruiser was really charming for just daring to be different, and secretly always kinda liked them.
I also definitely see a trend among younger Gen Z of longing for the times when design was fun instead of sterile and minimalist. A lot of current Gen Z memes show things like the contrast between fast food restaurants from the 2000s with things like chairs shaped like burgers and bright colorful décor, contrasted with modern equivalents with hip minimalist design, saying “look what they took from us.”
Gen Z misses the era of fun and unusual, creative designs, and the PT Cruiser fits that aesthetic to a T. We all grew up secretly liking it, and now that we’re old enough to drive, it especially helps that PT Cruisers on the used market are dirt cheap since nobody else wants them.
I imagine this same trend could easily extend to Chevy HHRs, SSRs, plus the VW New Beetle, BMW Minis, the Fiat 500, and maybe also the 11th gen Ford Thunderbird. If any smart auto industry execs want to market to Gen Z car buyers (assuming they ever make cars cheap enough for Gen Z buyers again), they’ll need to start making more goofy, silly, fun car designs again.
I’m a few years younger than you and considering a used car, and I disagree. I appreciate the PT as an attempt to do something different, but I wasn’t alive when it first came out and missed the first wave of hate. I see it as an old person car with pre-bailout Chrysler quality, and I say that as a Mopar fan. It’s got the same vibe as a Plymouth Voyager with the gold basket weave wheels to me.
I also don’t think the new minimalism is necessarily bad. To me, new logos are often getting rid of the junk from from the 90s-2000s “look at these newfangled computer graphics” era, like swooshes and unnecessary reflections, but judging by the memes, I might be alone in that.
I agree that trying new things is good, and don’t mind a retro attempt, but some of those 2000s retro cars didn’t work. Often, they tried to replace sealed beams with flush headlights in a way that didn’t quite work, and generally think that the approach was a little off for those. I’ll admit the 500 was good though. I would rather see trying new things in the manner of the Hyundai concepts, some French concepts, or the nissan ID.x
“they’ll need to start making more goofy, silly, fun car designs again.”
I agree. Bring back fun car designs!
I’m GenX and the PT Cruiser was only cool to Boomers when it came out, and today it remains pretty much that same level of cool, along with the Chevy HHR. I get the appeal of a small, tall-ish wagon, but the styling of both cars is the opposite of appealing to me.
I would like to mention that Gen Z were kids when the PT Cruiser was new. We were the grandkids of the people buying these cars, and they were just regular cars to us, albeit fun-looking regular cars. They were not “the uncool cars old people bought” to us, because as kids we barely had a concept of what was cool or fashionable yet.
Nowadays, the stereotype of who bought these is mostly gone. They’re just cheap used cars now in an era when cheap used cars are hard to find, especially cheap fun cars, and for us specifically they are almost completely removed from any context that would make them uncool. If anything, they’re just reminders of childhood nostalgia, and Gen Z already blames older generations for destroying things we were fond of as kids, so why would we care if older generations also hate the PT Cruiser? They’re not the ones we’re trying to impress anyway. The PT Cruiser is our generation’s car now, whether Chrysler originally intended it to be or not.
Idk, my genx cohort always found it charming.
If the PT Cruiser is cool, consider me Miles Davis.
THIS is making a comeback and not small manual transmission cars?
It’s not *big* and you could get one with manual. Most had the A904 but that’s a weak spot.
No, because those have always been cool among car-obsessed people. And car-obsessed kids can’t afford new cars or most used cars, so the PT Cruiser is one of the few cars that can be had on the used market with fun styling, good maintenance, and a low price. Cary on hating it all you want, that just means more affordable fun cars for us.
Didn’t Chrysler issued a massive recall on
PT Cruiser’s model years 2001-2010 due to it being dangerously uncool.
I don’t remember the specifics of the recall but it was something along the lines of
subconscious damage being done to the driver’s psyche and ego, if they continue to use a vehicle so hopelessly devoid of style.
That and many PT drivers complained about long stretches of unintended celibacy.
Did they fix those issues on these supposed cool ones.
When I was a teenager I wanted a black one. They look like a pocket-size hearse and I had daydreams of slapping landau bars on the side because what good teenage goth girl doesn’t want to drive around in a tiny hearse
You must have adored the Harold and Maude XK-E.
Who didn’t?
I’m amazed it was actually coachbuilt from a coupe, rather than a prop padded top applied to a roadster in such a way it could’ve been taken off and the car resold as stock without it when the movie was done.