When auto enthusiasts wax poetic about turbocharged, all-wheel-drive sports cars with manual transmissions, the conversation instantly detours to Europe or Japan. We praise ’80s rally icons like the Audi Quattro or Lancia Delta Integrale, and worship ’90s road-warriors like the Subaru Impreza STI and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
Meanwhile, Detroit was busy doing what Detroit did best: stuffing massive, naturally aspirated V8s into rear-wheel-drive land yachts backed by sluggish automatic gearboxes. Yet tucked neatly inside early ’90s Dodge dealerships sat a bizarre, tech-laden anomaly: America’s only turbocharged, all-wheel-drive sports car equipped with a good old-fashioned clutch pedal.
Enter the Dodge Stealth R/T Twin Turbo, the high-tech unicorn born from Chrysler’s legendary Diamond-Star Motors collaboration with Mitsubishi. While Mitsubishi unleashed its revolutionary 3000GT (known as the GTO back home), Dodge grabbed the exact same underlying wizardry to build its own badge-engineered flagship.
Underneath its sinuous, non-too-subtle bodywork, lay a serious mechanical powerhouse. While base front-wheel-drive Stealths limped around with a mundane 164-horsepower V6, the flagship R/T Twin Turbo packed a 3.0-liter DOHC V6 with dual intercoolers, sending 300 HP and 307 lb-ft of torque through a tight-ratio five-speed Getrag manual.
Armed with permanent all-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, it catapulted from 0 to 60 mph in a blistering 5.2 seconds. To put that into perspective, an E30 BMW M3 from three years prior cost $5,000 more and took nearly two extra seconds to reach the same milestone, while even the newer E36 M3 hit 60 mph in a slighter slower 5.4 seconds.
By 1994, Dodge freshened the Stealth with fixed headlights, a proper six-speed manual, and a bump to 320 HP, dropping quarter-mile times under 14 seconds. Sure, at 3,800 pounds (1,725 kg) it weighed about as much as a BMW 7 Series luxury barge of the era, earning it a reputation as a heavy sled.
But considering a clean early R/T Twin Turbo currently trades around $18,400 according to Hagerty, well below its Mitsubishi 3000GT twin, this forgotten slice of joint-venture muscle remains the ultimate budget bargain for those who demand three pedals and all-weather traction.