Mosler is mostly synonymous with their MT900. Despite being good, it's known as “that car George Lucas drives”. The company was so much more, though.

Over their history, Mosler made mostly ugly sports cars that performed extremely well. Their most well-known model has so many variants it was hard to know what you were in for. Their CEO is a character. Most importantly, their creations have on the whole been highly creative and/or hilarious.

Here’s a rundown of what made Mosler the craziest tuner in America.

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Featherweight Champions

Consulier GTP Side
via: Reddit

The Consulier GTP and Raptor have been covered a number of times elsewhere on the site, but they're worth addressing. The first was a sub-2000lb creation, the first road car to use a "composite monocoque chassis and a carbon-kevlar body". Despite being powered by a leftover 2.2 liter Chrysler four-cylinder making 175hp, it did 0-60 in about 5 seconds and dominated IMSA racing before being banned. It managed to beat "the Porsche 911 Turbo, Corvette ZR1, Lotus Esprit [and the] Calloway Corvette".

Warren Mosler and His Car of Many Colors

Mosler MT900 Yellow
via: Autocar

The MT900 had a frankly ludicrous number of variants. Fastest laps lists the MT900, the MT900S, MT900S Photon, MT900 GTR, and MT900 GTR XX (plus the Raptor GTR, unless you want to split hairs) were all available to the public. That’s not even counting the changes made to each individual model.

The MT900 was a great car, but Mosler released it in 2009, right smack in the middle of the financial crisis. Some of the variants were virtually dead ends. The MT900S Photon was supposed to be an improvement, but it was actually 4 seconds slower than its progenitor around Virginia International Raceway.

Mosler Land Shark
via: Motor1

Still, there’s one version that was more insane than all of them put together. The Land Shark was a Mosler MT900 GTR XX tuned by Intense Automotive Design. The firm claimed to have wrung out a colossal 2500 hp from a 6.2 liter V8, in a car that weighed 551 lbs less than the GTR XX, putting it at 1741 lbs. That’s less than a Dallara Stradale and allegedly enabled it to hit the Hennessey Venom's target 305mph. It also purported to run on a hybrid fuel. Barrett-Jackson sold one example – but it unfortunately never got a proper automotive review.

If It Looks Stupid, But It Works…

Mosler Twinstar Side View
via: Hagerty's

The Cadillac Twinstar was easily Mosler’s most outrageous creation. It took the already unpleasant 1999 Cadillac El Dorado and then put it on a breaking wheel. The result ended up with a longer wheelbase, hideous proportions, and sixteen cylinders. Mosler installed two V8’s, one in the front and one in the back, for a total of 575 hp.

The ridiculous premise wasn’t half as baffling as the fact that it worked, and worked well, managing 0-60 in 5 seconds. The car even had pretty solid handling (0.83 G!). The transmission was also markedly smooth because it would stagger the shift between engines, ensuring that there was always power going to the drive shaft.

Mosler J10
via: Imgur

Still, in terms of the ugliness Olympics there’s yet another one-off that takes the cake: this thing called the J10. It's an unholy matrimony: the back end of an S10 pickup welded onto the body of a Jeep Wrangler. Plus the Wrangler has two front axles instead of one. It is apparently excellent at taking bumps, and probably handles surprisingly well, but it has to be seen to be believed.

The Man Himself

Warren Mosler Pool
via: New York Times

Warren Mosler is pretty entertaining in his own right. In addition to being the company’s former CEO, he’s an economist, hedge fund manager, and both a congressional and presidential candidate. He ran for office multiple times in the US Virgin Islands tax haven, where he lives most of the year. His presidential bid relied on a platform that not only strongly supported a luxury tax but proposed lowering the national speed limit to 30mph! It can at least be said, then, that Mosler’s policies wouldn’t have been self-serving. He certainly wasn’t the only oddball at the company, though.

Feeling the Fire

Todd Wagner was Mosler’s chief engineer and the man who talked him out of installing the split-windscreen on the MT900, but his interest in appearances took other forms. As a result of an ownership dispute between Mosler and Wagner, the latter claimed responsibility for the marketing of what he considered his company’s new car, the RaptorGTR. It was an 838 hp take on the MT900 with a superb exhaust note. It should have been an easy sell.

However, Wagner advertised the Raptor GTR with what you see above, a beautifully terrible 2011 music video by singer Abby Cubey, featuring a cohort of sexy ladies and cold Eurovision-leftovers techno. Cubey was a talent so valued by the company that the RaptorGTR played the song over the speakers every time you started the car, and the tuned-up 1212 hp version of the car was literally named the CubeyGTR. The video made the RaptorGTR look like the product of a horny and mildly insecure divorcee, which wasn’t entirely off message. Mosler took pains to point out that he wasn’t involved.

Solid, In Spite of Everything

Lime Green Mosler MT900
via: Top Speed

Unlike some small-volume auto CEOs, Warren Mosler fundamentally did know what he was doing when it came to producing performance vehicles. His tiny company wouldn’t have had the stellar racing record it did otherwise. The quality of Mosler’s output also compelled Car and Driver to attempt to compensate for their sneering and unfair review of the Consulier GTP over the course of 20 years with a series of more charitable articles and an interview with Mosler.

His enthusiasm for low weight went beyond cars. One of his projects was a Dodge Ram van with a fiberglass composite body that shaved 1500 lbs from the vehicle’s weight. With an Oldsmobile four-cylinder, it managed 25 mpg instead of 14. He also built a powerboat that weighed one-third as much as the competition and thereby managed to be as fast with one-third of the power and triple the fuel economy.

He couldn’t make the market like him, but we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for anything Mosler Automotive produced.

Mosler Twinstar Open Trunk
via: Hagerty's

Sources: Allpar, Automotive Training Centre, Barrett-Jackson, Car and Driver, GT Spirit, Hagerty’s, Jalopnik, Motor1, Motor Authority, Road & Track, The Center of the Universe

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