Mosler Raptor Prototype Hits Facebook Marketplace for $125,000
- Story Cars
.png/v1/fill/w_320,h_320/file.jpg)
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
One of the strangest American performance cars of the 1990s has surfaced for sale in an equally unexpected place: Facebook Marketplace.
The purple car is listed as a 1992 Mosler Raptor prototype, with an asking price of $125,000. According to the seller, it is an original V8 development car from Consulier Industries/Mosler Automotive that was later fitted with the Raptor's unmistakable V-shaped windshield. Today, it reportedly runs an early MT900-era Chevrolet LS6 V8 paired with a Porsche G50/52 transaxle.
That description needs some context, because calling this simply a "1992 Mosler Raptor" skips over one of the messiest—and most interesting—development histories of any American supercar.
The Raptor didn't technically exist in 1992. This car appears to have started life as an earlier Consulier/Mosler development car and evolved into Raptor specification as Warren Mosler continued modifying his cars throughout the decade. Contemporary reporting confirms that Mosler repeatedly developed existing cars rather than starting over with entirely new chassis.
And the resulting Raptor was seriously fast.
It Started With the Consulier GTP
Long before the Raptor, there was the Consulier GTP.
Warren Mosler founded Consulier Industries in Florida during the 1980s with an unusual philosophy: remove weight wherever possible, use proven components from existing manufacturers, and worry about lap times more than conventional styling.
The resulting GTP was a lightweight, mid-engine sports car built around a composite monocoque. Early cars used Chrysler's turbocharged 2.2-liter four-cylinder rather than the large V8 that would later become associated with Mosler.
The GTP looked unconventional, but racing began proving Mosler's point. Its success eventually provided the foundation for something much more powerful.
By the early 1990s, Mosler was experimenting with putting Chevrolet V8 power into the platform.
The Mosler Intruder followed.
From Consulier to Intruder
The Intruder took the basic philosophy of the Consulier and turned up the power dramatically.
Contemporary reporting from the Los Angeles Times described Mosler taking a Consulier-based car and installing a 400-plus-horsepower Chevrolet V8. Four Intruders were reportedly built, with Mosler continuing to use the cars as rolling development platforms.
Other histories identify the initial Intruder specification as using a Lingenfelter-modified Corvette LT1 producing around 300 hp. The Intruder then won the Longest Day of Nelson 24-hour race in both 1993 and 1994.
Mosler wasn't finished.
A more powerful Intruder producing roughly 450 hp entered Car and Driver's One Lap of America in 1996.
It won.
That victory set up the transformation that created the Raptor.
The Windshield That Changed Its Name
For 1997, Mosler modified the Intruder with one of the strangest windshields ever fitted to a road car.
Instead of a conventional curved windshield, the car received two sharply angled panes meeting in a central V.
It wasn't there just to make the car look bizarre. Mosler developed the split windshield to reduce aerodynamic drag and frontal area. The trade-off was compromised visibility, and the new glass arrangement reportedly blocked portions of the dashboard ventilation system.
With the windshield came a new name:
Mosler Raptor.
This is also why identifying the Marketplace car simply by model year gets complicated. The seller lists the car as a 1992, but the Raptor identity did not appear until 1997. Existing Intruders were converted and continually modified, rather than every Raptor being constructed from scratch as a new production car.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 1998 that of the four Intruders Mosler built, only one had been sold, while Mosler continued developing the others. Two had received the pointed two-piece windshield and were being called Raptors by that point.
So this car's 1992 designation is best understood as part of its earlier development history—not evidence that a production Mosler Raptor existed in 1992.
Designed by the Stopwatch
The Raptor's looks were controversial from day one.
Warren Mosler didn't seem particularly bothered.
When Car and Driver later tested the MT900, the magazine recalled Mosler's earlier cars as incredibly fast but notoriously unconventional-looking. Mosler explained his philosophy simply: his cars were designed around performance rather than appearance.
The Raptor's results made his argument difficult to dismiss.
After the Intruder won One Lap of America in 1996, the newly renamed Raptor returned in 1997 and won again.
Then it returned in 1999.
It won again.
Car and Driver described the 1999 Raptor as essentially the same car that had won in 1996 as an Intruder, then been rebodied with its distinctive two-piece windshield for 1997. Three overall One Lap victories in four years made the car something of a recurring nightmare for its competitors.
The magazine noted that the Raptor had been "absent by popular demand" in 1998. After another victory in 1999, Mosler was ultimately disinvited from the 2000 event.
Ugly or not, the thing kept winning.
446 Horsepower, 2,773 Pounds
The numbers explain why.
When Car and Driver tested a Raptor in 1998, it weighed just 2,773 pounds.
Behind the cabin sat a Lingenfelter-built 383-cubic-inch Chevrolet small-block V8 producing 446 hp at 5,800 rpm and 429 lb-ft of torque at 5,000 rpm.
Power went through a five-speed transaxle sourced from a Porsche 911 Turbo.
Performance was exceptional for the late 1990s:
0–60 mph: 3.9 secondsQuarter-mile: 12.3 seconds at 115 mphTop speed: 163 mph
The Raptor wasn't simply quick for an obscure American manufacturer. A sub-four-second sprint to 60 mph put it firmly into serious supercar territory at the time.
And despite the exotic performance, Mosler never stopped raiding other manufacturers' parts bins.
One particularly funny example survived into the Raptor: its steering wheel came from a Chrysler minivan.
A 446-hp, mid-engine, Porsche-transaxle American supercar with a windshield shaped like the bow of a boat—and a minivan steering wheel.
That was Mosler.
So What Exactly Is the Marketplace Car?
This is where the story gets particularly interesting—and less certain.
The Facebook Marketplace seller describes the car as the "original Prototype V8 production car from Consulier Industries/Mosler Automotive." The seller also claims it was later upgraded with the Raptor windshield during Mosler's competition years and that Warren Mosler's signature remains on the inside of the front decklid.
Silodrome, which recently examined the car and listing, describes it as claimed to be one of two original V8 prototypes associated with Mosler's transition away from the turbocharged four-cylinder Consulier. It also notes that these development cars were repeatedly rebuilt and modified, making exact original specifications difficult to establish today.
The seller further claims only two Raptor road cars were produced and that the other is held in the Mosler collection in St. Augustine, Florida. Period reporting does support the broader history that two of Mosler's Intruder development cars were converted into Raptors.
What shouldn't be assumed is that the car sitting on Marketplace today remains mechanically identical to the Raptor Car and Driver tested in 1998.
It doesn't.
An LS6 and Porsche G50/52 Today
According to the current listing, the Marketplace car now uses an early MT900-era drivetrain consisting of a Chevrolet LS6 V8 and Porsche G50/52 transaxle.
Silodrome notes that the transmission may date from an earlier configuration but that the LS6 is probably not the car's original engine. With a prototype that spent much of its life being used for development, however, defining a single "correct" specification isn't straightforward.
That later LS-family connection also makes sense within Mosler history.
The Raptor was eventually replaced by the far more polished Mosler MT900, developed with designer Rod Trenne. The MT900 continued Mosler's familiar formula of a lightweight mid-engine structure, Chevrolet V8 power and a Porsche-derived transaxle. Car and Driver's original MT900 test described a 350-hp Corvette LS1 paired with a Porsche ZF six-speed gearbox.
The Marketplace Raptor therefore appears to carry hardware from the next chapter of Mosler development inside a chassis rooted in the previous one.
It's less a perfectly preserved production car than a rolling timeline of Mosler's evolution.
The Raptor Was Never Really a Normal Production Car
That distinction matters.
The Raptor wasn't built like a Corvette, Viper or even most low-volume exotics. Mosler's development process blurred the line between prototype, race car and road car.
Consuliers became Intruders. Intruders became Raptors. Engines changed. Bodywork changed. Windshields changed. Cars that raced were further developed afterward.
Period reporting from 1998 put the Raptor's price at roughly $159,000, but only two of the four Intruders had been converted into Raptors at that point.
Mosler's attention soon shifted to the cleaner-sheet MT900, which arrived around 2001 and became the company's best-known model.
The Raptor remained the strange transitional step between the crude but innovative Consulier and the much more recognizable MT900.
And that may be exactly what makes this surviving car so interesting.
Now It's on Facebook Marketplace
More than three decades after this car's story reportedly began, it has surfaced in Florida with an asking price of $125,000.
The listing identifies it as a 1992 and describes the reason for sale simply: the owners are relocating and losing garage space.
There is something almost perfect about that.
This is a car connected to a tiny American manufacturer that challenged conventional supercars, won major endurance events, dominated One Lap of America, used a Porsche gearbox, evolved through multiple identities, wore one of the strangest windshields ever fitted to a performance car, and helped lead directly to the Mosler MT900.
And you can apparently find it the same way you'd find a used dining table.
On Facebook Marketplace.
At $125,000, it isn't cheap. And given the complicated development history, any serious buyer would need to verify its chassis history, documentation, drivetrain changes and provenance directly before treating every claim in the listing as established fact.
But ordinary production-car rules don't really apply here.
The Mosler Raptor was never ordinary to begin with.
It started as an experiment, evolved into a race winner, helped define one of America's strangest supercar companies—and somehow ended up on Facebook Marketplace.
Comments