By the 1990s, fans of Chrysler products were full to the brim of K-car based vehicles and were ready for any kind of update. The minivans, the Daytona, the Aries and the Lancer all were getting long in the tooth. What had been wildly successful in the early to mid 1980s was now old hat. Chrysler had paid back the loans and had made money hand-over-fist, but Lee Iacocca had made a mistake very similar to what Henry Ford II had done in the 1970s: assume that he knew what the public wanted more than the public did. He ran the K-car platform to death while doing nothing with trucks, leaving the RWD M-body line to die on the vine, and generally focusing on facelifts and yet another Brougham take in the form of the new-for-1990 Chrysler Imperial. 
The Spirit was the replacement for the Dodge 600, yet another K-car you probably haven’t bothered to remember in at least twenty years, but at least the Spirit saw the K-car out on a very high note. That would be the Spirit R/T, a 224-horsepower howler fitted with a 2.2L turbo four cylinder that had a cylinder head designed by Lotus and came only with a five-speed manual transaxle as the only choice. Running 0-60 in 5.8 seconds and able to give a BMW M5 something to think about, the Spirit R/T would wipe the floor with the Ford Taurus SHO and if you had the fortitude to find out for yourself, you’d find the 141 mile per hour top speed. Crack a K-car joke now.
Lido is gone, and most K-cars are too (aside from every example that one dude in California is hell-bent on saving), but this Spirit R/T doesn’t need to be another casualty. If ever there was a factory car that fit the “Pro Commuter” concept of a useful daily that kicks ass, the Spirit R/T is it. It isn’t everyday that we’d recommend any K-car, but today is that day.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol used these on the big turnpike between OKC and Tulsa. They hauled ass, and were tough enough to do the job.
What’s even more rare than the car, is snow in Rio Rancho NM!