The Dodge Neon SRT-4. If there is one car that doesn’t deserve half the ration of grief that it gets, I’ve got to hand it to Mopar’s solid attempt at kicking Honda fanboys right in the ass. In 2005, everybody I knew was in the military, had come home from their first tour of Iraq with money, and had bought a car. One guy, Wayne, bought himself a black and silver SRT-4, and other than putting “LIL VPR” on the license plate, left it alone…and we fed him as much smack-talk as we could load into a bucket, over and over again. In a group of friends that had V8 musclecars, a Corvette, a Cadillac and a Cobalt SS, Wayne’s poor Neon got the brunt of the abuse. Then one day, I wound up driving it and all I could think the whole time I was stirring the trans around Tacoma was, “wow…this little thing has some nuts for a Neon!”
Not since the 1980s Turbo cars did Mopar nail the boosted four-banger game as hard as they did with the 148 cubic inch mill in the Neon. Built by PVO (Performance Vehicle Operations, the predecessor to SRT as we know it today) the Neon rocked up to 230 horsepower in stock form…plenty respectable from the car better known as the compact that, according to the ads, greeted you with a friendly face. Modified, they are giant-killers in the right hands, howling little ripsaws that can run hard. Don’t believe me? Check out the little red weapon below. This is the fastest version that still sports a stir-yer-own box. It’s not a stock transaxle…that would be a cloud of dust once the boost comes on, we suspect…but trapping nearly 160 MPH in 1/4 mile roll races? Yeah…we approve of that.
