Chief Chrysler designer and boss of the newly minted SRT performance brand stirred the social media pot last night, polling the twitterverse on reaction to a diesel-powered high-performance Chrysler product.
Getting the conversation going amongst his 4,000 followers Ralph Gilles asked, “How many out there would roll in an Diesel SRT? Which type? Thx.”
While consumers have continued to be slow to warm up to diesel-powered passenger cars, Gilles’ many enthusiast and journalist followers chimed in with ideas, ranging from a rather practical Ram diesel, to a less-likely Dart diesel, to the most likely, a diesel-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Chrysler has already announced it will bring to market a non-SRT diesel-powered Grand Cherokee for the 2014 model year.
“I am fascinated by Diesel,” said Gilles in one tweet, following up by extolling its virtues with the following, “Torque can be addictive to canyon carver to commuter a well designed Diesel can be a weapon in real world driving plus astonishing mileage!”
Commenting that the reaction he received made him want to head straight to the lab, Gilles made a diesel-SRT model sound like a near certainty. “I think we will see a SRT Diesel in this decade,” he said. “Between Fiat & Chrysler we have lots of Potential.”
But a diesel SRT might not be the only wild project going on behind the scenes at Chrysler with Gilles poking his hornets nest of followers once again by commenting that he’d also like to see a street version of Travis Pastrana’s Global Rally Cross Dodge Dart race car.