Cheap Front-Wheel-Drive Thrills: 1999 Dodge Neon R/T vs 2006 Chevy Cobalt SS

Good morning! We’re starting the week off with a pair of factory hot rod economy cars. One is a well-known canyon-carver, and the other is way faster in a straight line than it has any right to be, and they’re both proudly letting their check-engine lights shine. Sounds like our kind of matchup, doesn’t it?

On Friday, we looked at a Fiat that was prepped for track use, and a Subaru kei truck that isn’t quite ready for the DMV yet. I guess I’m not surprised that you favored the kei truck. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. But hey, if you all want to overlook Alitalia graphics, an Enzo Ferrari connection, and an engine designed by a guy with the greatest Italian name of all time – Aurelio Lampredi – in favor of some wheezy little Japanese farm truck that can barely hit highway speeds, that’s your choice.

I have no idea what the process is, if there is one, for re-titling a former race car, but commenter and contributor Brandon Forbes pointed out that the kei truck may not be all that easily registerable either. It sounds like the seller has half-assed some paperwork, and that could cause all sorts of headaches for a new owner. It might be better to seek out a more legitimate deal, if you really want a kei truck, but you’d have to apply your own stripes.

Now then: The malaise era of the late 1970s and early 80s, and the resulting adoption of front-wheel-drive for most mainstream cars, felt like the end of high-performance vehicles. “High performance” FWD cars started showing up before too long, cars like the Chevy Citation X-11 and the Dodge Shelby Charger, but they were only fast in comparison to the standard versions of the same car, and they introduced us all to a new and terrible term: “torque steer.” It felt like the thrill was gone, and it wasn’t coming back.

A decade or two later, though, automakers had tamed the FWD beast a bit, and new engine technologies meant even more power and better drivability. And for a while, after engines got good again but before safety regulations added a bunch of weight, we had some really fun little FWD pocket-rockets to choose from. I’ve found a couple of them for us to look at today, both a little worse for wear, but probably still a lot of fun. Let’s check them out.

1999 Dodge Neon R/T – $4,000

Engine/drivetrain: 2.0 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD

Location: Lancaster, CA

Odometer reading: 125,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives great

Any Dodge fan worth their salt knows that the R/T badge is supposed to mean something special. First appearing in 1968, the R/T package (for “Road/Track”) added horsepower, handling, and style to the Charger and Coronet muscle cars. Since then, there has been an R/T package for just about every generation of Dodge, from the sublime Challenger and Viper to the ridiculous Aspen and Caliber. In 1998, Dodge added an R/T badge to its Neon compact, making an already fun and quick car even quicker and more fun.

The Neon R/T came out of the Neon ACR, a stripped-down high-performance version of the Neon intended for club-level racing and autocrossing. The R/T kept the ACR’s 150-horsepower twincam engine, short-ratio five-speed manual, and stiffer suspension, and added air conditioning, a stereo, and some stripes and badges so everyone knew what you had. This one has covered 125,000 miles, and has been graced with a whole bunch of new parts, including the timing belt and water pump, which is not a fun job on a Neon. It runs great, but has a check-engine light for a code in the evaporative emissions system, which shouldn’t be too hard to track down.

It looks like it’s in pretty good shape overall; the interior is nice, though I’d like to know what’s under that dash cover. There may be a leaky door seal somewhere on the driver’s side as well, or maybe a grommet missing on the firewall. It looks like the car was just washed prior to the photos, and the driver’s side floor mat looks wet. It’s worth asking about and checking out.

Outside, it’s presentable, but not perfect. The seller says it has a salvage title from being hit while it was parked, requiring the front bumper, headlights, and turn signals to be replaced. It doesn’t take much to ding the title on a car this old, and on a specialty vehicle like this, it only really matters if you want it for an investment – in which case you don’t park it where it can be crashed into. This is a good driver-quality example of a rare and fun car.

2006 Chevrolet Cobalt SS – $3,800

Engine/drivetrain: Supercharged 2.0 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD

Location: Cerritos, CA

Odometer reading: 111,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives great

Chevrolet’s SS, or Super Sport, badge goes back even further, all the way back to 1961 and the Impala (or 1957 and a Corvette show car, if you’re being pedantic, which I know someone will be). Like Dodge, Chevy threw the SS badge around with wild abandon during the muscle car days, offering a Super Sport package on Chevelles, Camaros, Novas, and pretty much everything else. The SS packages sort of disappeared in the late ’70s in favor of the “Z” series of option packages, but the badge made a few memorable appearances in the 1990s. In 2005, Chevy’s then-new Cobalt compact received an SS badge – and a supercharger to back it up.

This car has been the subject of our GM Hit Or Miss series in the past, and I think, like other cars in that series, counts as both a hit and a miss. On the one hand, it was faster than snake-shit (though the Mopar fan in me has to point out that it was not faster than the Neon SRT-4, the R/T’s successor) and actually handled pretty well for what it was. On the other hand, it was, well, a Cobalt. You can cover a rental car’s interior in leather and fake carbon-fiber, but you can’t make it not be fundamentally the same car. (Though yes, to be fair, one could make the exact same complaint about the Neon.)

This one is pretty clean inside, at least. The seller says it runs and drives great, but one photo shows the dashboard, and the check-engine light is on, plain as day. Since the tags are up in November, and it will need to be smog-tested then, it’s worth asking why it’s on. But the seller did just have the air conditioner serviced, so that’s something.

Outside, it’s a little tacky for my tastes; I’m not a fan of the “none more black” look. Especially if you’re going to paint the wheels black and then curb the hell out of them. With stock-colored wheels, and without those dumb smoked light covers, I think it would look a lot better. The aftermarket ram-air hood can stay, I guess; it’s too much work to try to replace it.

Both of these cars, in pristine shape, are probably in the “future classic” family, but not these examples, and that’s what I like about them. These were meant to be cheap fun, used and borderline-abused and enjoyed, and I think these are both perfect for that. The prices may seem a little high, but we all know the used car market is nuts these days. They’re still cheaper than a whole lot of cars that are a whole lot less fun. So which famous two-letter badge do you want on your economy car?

(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)