Why The Dodge Viper is The GREATEST Super Car EVER

so with the relatively recent news that Dodge is offering their Flagship ice cars in favor of electrification a lot of people are understandably mourning the fact that pretty soon what made Dodge special will be lost to the non-stop March of time however if we flash back just a few years ago we lost another Dodge Legend the Viper this is a car that from the moment it rolled off the production line it was built to slay European competition for a fraction of the price and make sure you had a grin a mile wide while doing it so let's look back on the good old days and figure out how Dodge a company most associated with missed child support payments managed to beat Porsha at their own game so as much as I'd love to Chronicle every single awesome moment in the Viper's history that video would literally be days long and I just don't have time to edit all that what I will do is focus on some of the Viper's best moments starting with its Inception this car was actually designed all the way back in 1989. see in secret Bob Lutz the president of Chrysler and Tom Gale the chief designer at Chrysler concocted a plan to essentially build a modern take on the legendary Shelby AC Cobra and they decided that in order for it to work they couldn't treat this like any other car they couldn't do any corporate like hold focus groups hire Consulting agencies or even let the board of directors in on it that's the definition of guys being dudes what's better than this guys being dudes just imagine if you and your best friend were like you know what let's just build a car but not like a standard Econo box let's do a modern take on a classic Legend like say a Ferrari F40 oh yeah and just tell absolutely no one about it anyways at first things started out more it's just kind of like a joke come on it's just a goof you know just making like a simple clay model nothing more but then similar to gambling addicts they just wanted one more hit you know what I mean so building a concept out of sheet metal couldn't hurt right so they did just that in the no fun suits on the board of directors were so impressed with how the vehicle turned out just as a concept that they gave Bob and Tom the green light to Showcase it at the North American International Auto Show now when I tell you people went rabid for this thing I mean the line of 45 year old men in Loveless marriages with beer bellies was all the way out of the convention center and that was just to see this thing but in all seriousness you got to remember people always go berserk when they see a concept car but the demand for this car was so high that Bob and Tom gave the head Viper designer Roy whatever the hell that name is the gray light to start getting the gears turning for production however once the bigwig's herdos gonna get the green light for production the goat of the American automotive industry a little-known guy called Lee Iacocca put a delay on the 70 million dollars needed to create this Beast with him implying it would be a lot to spend on a car that wouldn't guarantee success I know it's her job to help this guy and everything but I think this guy's a lost cause yeah we'll see how that worked out for him later anyways that Roy guy was told to build a team of the best designers to build this monster of a car and after selecting 85 guys and gals the team got to work making the best Supercar the world had ever seen up until that point and what they came up with was this I've come this was the first gen Viper and it's held even today as one of the best Enthusiast cars ever made it got an 8 liter V10 which yes I guess technically you could say was a truck engine with it being a very distant descendant from the Magnum V10 found in Ram models from the arrow but if you look into it you realize it shares almost nothing with the Magnum V10 even down to the block as it would go from being a cast iron to an aluminum block and have essentially everything from top to bottom inside and out changed they managed to pull this off because at the time Chrysler actually owned Lamborghini and essentially held them at gunpoint and forced them to design an engine that would ultimately power the car that would decimate its Diablo and team Viper with the alpha of America's performance cart gift to the world and Carol Shelby the guy who makes those Shelby's stay true to the original Spirit of the car sacrificing nothing to save weight with traction control and abs not even being an option along with AC a roof or Windows door handles or even exterior keyholes for door locks but they still put in door locks I don't know why but they did its final curb weight was just under 3 300 pounds a feather compared to its competition in the Ferraris and Lamborghinis and it showed in its performance because of that lightweight paired with the aluminum block V10 pumping out 400 Fierce American Burrows that got this piece from a standstill to 60 in around 4 seconds even today that's really fast especially with the manual transmission this came with but back then those types of speeds coming from an American car were unheard of and with the starting price in the mid 50 Grand range it didn't Premier Pennies on the dollar compared to its European competition this car ended up being a money printing machine for Chrysler as the waiting list was a mile long and Chrysler made back the money invested into it in no time contrary to what Lee Iacocca had predicted I told you to get back to him and his team was busy making this this is a Chrysler TC which ended up being a massive failure and cost five times as much as the Viper to develop now I'm going to skip over a lot of history and focus on the final gen Viper the VX because this is not only Peak Viper but in my opinion Peak Supercar now prior to this car being announced the Viper had actually been on Hiatus as sales had plummeted to a trickle and that paired with the 2008 economic crisis meant that it wasn't really an option to do these fun little side quests however in 2010 at a private meeting between Dodge and their network of dealers it was revealed that plans were being put into motion to bring the Viper back this time with a Vengeance and we really didn't have to wait long because at the 2012 New York Auto Show the 5th gen Viper was unveiled and everyone went just as ballistic as when the OG Viper dropped this is a car that even today still looks stunning and keep in mind it was unveiled more than a decade ago this Viper got an enhanced version of the same basic V10 but it had been stroked out to 8.4 liters and pumped out 640 horsepower without the assistance of any forced induction which is just awesome this Viper was pretty different than its ancestor though as it had Creature Comforts like AC door handles wind knows that even a roof whoa it was made into a Tremec built six-speed manual transmission the only transmission option and that helped get it from 0 to 60 hidden eye watering three and a half seconds that's essentially Hypersonic speeds for a car with a manual transmission and it got it to a top speed of 206 miles an hour unfortunately as amazing as this car was sales kinda tanked like really tank like to the point that they had to shut down production for two months because Dodge dealers couldn't sell these cars and they slashed the price by 15 grand and I gotta be honest as much as I loathe automakers and their repeated dumb decisions guys we gotta take responsibility for this one this car had essentially everything we always piss and moan about cars not have it it had a naturally aspirated largest placement engine a B10 no less made into a manual transmission stuffed in a car that was as light as humanly possible that could easily smoke any European Supercar for a third of the price and we didn't buy them this led to dodge announcing that the Viper was going to be discontinued by the the end of 2017 but we all know Dodge and we knew that they weren't going out without a bang so the team at SRT began brewing a witch's brew that only a team as mental as them could ever dream of doing they gave the Viper the largest Wing ever put on a production car a diffuser about as big as the Tunnel built for trains and a front splitter to go with all of that they gave that V10 a 5 horsepower increase up to 645 horsepower and switched over every panel that they could to carbon fiber and then gave it custom suspension courtesy of Bilstein which had 10 different selectable stiffness and rebound settings they gave a bespoke tire specifically for track applications courtesy of Kumo and if all of that wasn't enough they got six piston Brembo brake calipers and the rotors had been switched to carbon ceramic brakes this was what they came up with the Viper Acres with the E standing for extreme Arrow once this car was unveiled it took the Viper off life support albeit temporarily as people really wanted this car it's similar to a Housewives addiction to pills they would do anything to happen and right for really so as this car officially broke 14 track lap records all over the world but the true test was Yet to Come As Dodge's main goal was to beat Porsha in their own backyard at their own game their Benchmark was the fan favorite and widely considered greatest track Supercar the GT3 RS and their goal was simple to not only be but absolutely dominate the GT3 RS at the Nurburgring so Dodge set the team and the Viper acres to the ring and came back with a time of 7 minutes and one second beaming the GT3 RS by a whole four seconds but as if the lock for the Viper couldn't get any worse the time couldn't officially be verified meaning that they left the ring empty-handed but later that year a private outfit funded by GoFundMe actually brought the American Legend back to the green hell and this time they were determined to not leave empty-handed they started off fantastic as early on in the day they had a massive Tire failure at 170 miles an hour and shortly after a leaky drain plug actually seized the rear diff meaning that that day was effectively lost a couple weeks later after working out some King thinks the team returned and managed to set an absolutely blistering lap time of again seven minutes in one second mirroring the exact time Chrysler said and this time it was verifiable so the record was set in stone but don't think that it's over yet as when they went out for another attempt this car was on course to put in an even faster lap time but for whatever reason the automotive Gods really hated the Viper and they suffered another tire failure this time though it was all she wrote as this tire failure caused the car to collide with a barrier and the airbags deployed totaling the car according to eyewitness accounts the Viper was on track to set a sub-7 minute lap time but you want to know the craziest part about all of this you could buy this car off the showroom floor for a sticker price of and get ready for this 118 thousand dollars this car brand new costs less than a used Audi R8 with the V10 and costs a fraction of what Porsche unveiled a year later with their updated GT3 RS which would end up being slower around the Nurburgring by four seconds keep in mind that Porsche used a pdk automatic transmission while the Viper used a manual and still be not something you'd expect from a company known for making Vehicles like the Dodge Journey and the stratus [Music]

Channel: JGarage

Views: 3,551

Keywords: Dodge, Viper, Viper ACR, Viper ACR-E, Donut Media, Donut Media Dodge Viper, Donut Media Viper, Dodge Viper, Dodge Viper TA, Dodge Viper GTS, Dodge Viper GT, Dodge Hellcat, SRT Dodge Viper, SRT Viper, SRT Hellcat, Mopar, Challenger, Charger, SRT Challenger, SRT Charger

Id: B6JFU6sks8Q

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2023