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2004 Dodge Neon SRT-4 Compact Sports Sedan
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The initials of SRT -- signifying "Street and Racing Technology" -- mark new high-performance vehicles for Dodge, while the digit tacked at the tail indicates the number of cylinders in the engine.
With Viper that means ten cylinders and for SRT-4 it denotes four cylinders. But the four-pack in SRT-4 is not the tepid plant that comes in a typical compact. There's a turbo-charger and aluminum inter-cooler attached to a dual-cam 2.4-liter four-in-line rigged for high output with a large-hole throttle body and high-flow intake manifold.
It's rated up to 215-hp at 5,400 rpm plus 245 lb-ft of torque available between 2,000 and 4,800 rpm.
To translate all of that torque to speed at the wheels is a heavy-duty five-speed manual shifter with equal-length halfshafts and a high capacity clutch.
How quick is it?
Stopwatch times for a romp from zero to 60 in SRT-4 easily clip below six seconds.
Now tie the car's performance figures to its competitive price points to reach the sweetest spot, as Dodge sets the MSRP for SRT-4 at only $19,995. That makes it the swiftest production car in the American market priced below $20,000.
Think of it as a factory-sanctioned and affordable route into the world of street racers customized off compact-class front-wheel-drive (FWD) sedans.
Roots of SRT-4 trace back several years to a Neon SRT concept car that twirled on the turntable in a Dodge display at the Los Angeles International Auto Show. Using the compact-class structure of a Neon as the starting point, SRT resembled one of those customized sport compact cars from the street-racing scene in Los Angeles as captured on the big screen in "The Fast and the Furious" flick.
Subsequent reaction to the SRT concept on the auto show circuit was so strong that designers at Dodge soon went to work on a production version and the new SRT-4 is the result. It's now rolling out of a Dodge plant in Belvidere, Ill., that also constructs the Neon.
To call the SRT-4 a Neon would be a mistake, however, since the two vehicles share few components aside from the core structure, although Neon has performance roots of its own with thousands of drivers lured into sports car races through the Neon Challenge series of SCCA-sanctioned events.
But SRT-4 goes far further than any Neon to fashion a street racer. First, it captures the look of a custom job.
