Urban Gear Works

Over the next twelve days, Urban Gear Works will be posting a wish list for the auto industry. Here's Day Four:

Return of the Firepower!

In 2005, Chrysler unveiled a beautiful grand touring coupe called the Firepower!. In addition to a name that included rather pompous punctuation, it featured a flowing, almost Aston Martin-like, but distinctly Chrysler-styled body fitted over a Viper chassis paired with a 6.1-liter Hemi engine. As with so many Chrysler concepts, it was fully operational and many magazine tests sang praise for the Firepower!. With so many mechanical components already in use around the company, production seemed like a forgone conclusion, but the Great Recession and Chrysler's subsequent bankruptcy killed all hope for a low-volume halo model. Even the mighty Viper became temporarily extinct.

Now, seven years later, the Viper is back, Chrysler has its strongest lineup in years, and we hope it might be time for the Firepower! to get a second chance. Lexus has (probably) greenlit the LF-CC, and Cadillac's CTS-V coupe is without an American rival. On the other hand, realistic sales volumes for such a car would be very small. In our eyes, the design for the Firepower! could be easily stretched into a four-door fastback to compete with the Mercedes CLS and the Audi A7. Just drop the exclamation point - it wreaks havoc with grammar check.

Car & Driver wrote a fairly extensive review of the Firepower! when it was new. Read it here.

Read Day One | Day Two | Day Three