Dodge's Wild Child, The Dodge Viper

"-Amateur" (amateur) 08/14/2013 at 00:00 • Filed to: None

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"This baby's got a few surprises left in her, sweetheart" -Han Solo to Leia in regards to the Viper

The new kid on the block, it was brutally fast and crude; this machine was like a young snake. You see, a mature snake can control the amount of venom it injects in its prey...on the other hand, a young snake doesn't have that kind of precision or control, and just injects an ungodly amount of venom into whatever it bites. The trick to overcoming this is actually quite simple... don't be the Dodge Viper's prey.

As with all great ideas, it began with a casual conversation between one person to another. Those two people happen to be Chrysler President Bob Lutz and the Chief of Design, Tom Gale. It was a 5 minute conversation in which Bob Lutz said, "We really ought to kick off doing a project like a reborn Cobra, " and that's literally all it took to get the ball rolling. No politics, just pure bliss.

Lutz wanted a modern day sports car with an engine management system, new-think transmission, a computer aided suspension, and equipped with "world-class" tires. This isn't a spaceship, so they forego turbochargers, all wheel drive trains, ABS, adjustable shocks, or that four wheel steering mumbo jumbo; just a good ole' front engine, rear wheel drive setup with unfiltered communication between car, driver, and pavement. Sounds like a recipe for success if you ask me.

The people at Chrysler's Pacifica Studio were frothing at the mouth to cram a V8 into a convertible sports car...and with this chance, they pulled out all the stops.

Their masterpiece was mocked up in 1985 and it was called the Izod...err, not to be confused with the other IZOD ( not going to lie, I'm a big Indy Car fan )

So while the Pacifica boys were making the sex appeal, the Chrysler executives had to find the drive for the Viper's moxie. Bob Lutz met up with Francois Castaing, head of the truck and Jeep engineering division for Chrysler. Under Castaing's watch, there was a new V-10 truck engine in development. They joked about it saying, " That's the kind of engine that back in the '60s, Bizzarrini and DeTomaso would have bought to create the great sports car of back then. You know, very powerful, torquey, big gas American engine, put into a nice body...Well, maybe we should sell the engine to people like that." Unknown to them, this conversation was the match to the fire...

Bob Lutz had an epiphany, " It occurred to me that Chrysler had all the bits and pieces in the parts bin. Whether it's the truck bin or the car bin, who cares? But we had all the pieces in the bin to do a show car that would pick up on the theme of the Cobra. "

The Viper had Carroll Shelby's blessing. Lutz and Castaing approached him, seeing how Shelby was Chrysler's performance consultant at that time. Lutz said, " Why don't we build a sports car, something like the old 427 Cobra, only let's build a 1990s version of it; what do you think of the idea? " Carroll was on board with the idea, but alas, didn't have a direct hand in making the Viper as he was dealing with a heart transplant at that time... probably because the mere idea of the Viper gave him heart palpitations.

In 3 weeks time, those Izod sketches were made into a full size clay mock-up. Lutz saw it and said it was good. He then rested on the 7th day. On May 8, 1988, construction was underway to bring this snake to life for the 1989 auto show circuit.

Bob Lutz's words upon seeing the Viper in the flesh was priceless, " I was a little shocked when I saw the first Viper workout. It was to me more of a departure from the Cobra styling themes that I had personally envisaged. I would have done a more literal update of the Cobra. Obviously, you know, with a much faster windshield, but I probably would have had a tendency to keep the Cobra mouth and everything...which would have been wrong. Because then it would have been merely a restyle of the Cobra, whereas the Viper now is a totally unique car which is reminiscent in character of what a Cobra was. But it now stands unique, as opposed to being a son of Cobra."

Bob obviously wanted something snake-like for its name. Cobra was obviously already taken. Sidewinder sounded to militaristic, Asp was...yeah forget we mentioned that one, Python sound good...but their big fat snakes who lie around all day and eat pigs whole; not very fitting for the car. Viper ...ahhh, now that rolls of your tongue!

When the concept debuted on January 4, 1989 at the Detroit Auto Show, the crowd went wild. They would crowd 12 deep to see this thing with their own two eyes. It was the most talked about car of that year. We're talking about magazine covers, newspapers, letters from the public begging that the Viper be made...some so crazy as sending deposit checks for it before the call was made to produce it.

There cries were heard and on May 18, 1990, Chrysler let the world know that it would indeed be building the Viper.

These cars were produced for the 1992 model year. It had a freak of nature 8.0 Liter V-10 under the hood, pumping 400 HP and 450 LB FT of torque. 0-60 came at a lightning fast 4.4 seconds, with the car screaming past the quarter in 13.1 seconds. That was incredible for 1992! That's incredible...today! At a $50,000 list price, a steal. It definitely gave the Corvette ZR-1 a run for its money.

I mean this car was brutal, It was spine shattering on bumpy roads and extremely twitchy. It would kill you... when you most expected it to. This car was old testament, blood, guts, and wrath.

In 1993, they introduced the little gem known as the GTS, with its Daytona Cobra inspired design:

In 1996, the Viper GTS-R appeared on the international racing scene. It's brutal speed was more than enough to tear apart the competition, limb from limb. It finished one-two at the 24 Hours of Lemans GTS Class in 1998, 1999, and 2000 under the French Team Oreca. It's interesting to note that these Vipers were called Chrysler Vipers as that's what they were called outside of North America. Previously in 1997, Team Oreca won the GT2 championship under the FIA GT Championship series.In 1998, Team Oreca returned to the FIA GT Championship, winning 9 out of the ten races in their class.

For 2000, Team Oreca focused solely on the American Le Mans series. In its opening race, they won the 24 Hours of Daytona by a slim margin against the Corvette Factory Race Team. Oreca went on to win 10 races that season, losing just 2 to the Corvette. The Viper won the championship that year quite handily.

Chrysler stopped backing Team Oreca in 2001, and with that, dissolved the Viper's racing success. Team Oreca was forced to abandon the Viper racing teams. The Viper racing teams continued, but were getting crushed under the foot of Prodrive's Ferraris. They entered other races, but the Vipers weren't the same after the split.

The Viper ACR debuted from 2008-2010 and was the pinnacle of Viper performance. This car had suspension and engine tuned for flat out tarmac brawling. The steroid injected engine blasted 600 HP and 560 LB FT of torque. The interior was stripped and it was wrapped with street legal racing tires. It weighed 3400 lbs, did 0-60 in 3.5 seconds. 0-100 was a mere 7.8 seconds and the standing quarter mile was 11.9 seconds.

It set the production car lap time record at the Nurburgring twice.

once in 2008 with a time of 7:22:1

and again in 2010 with a time of 7:12:13

Obviously, we all know about the new Viper...so I'll just leave it at that.

Credit goes to MotorTrend, Car and Driver, Editors of Consumer Guide and Top Speed for making this possible

Makoyouidiot > -Amateur 08/14/2013 at 00:27

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The fact remains, if I had around 120k to spend on a car...I'd buy a 2014 Viper TA...because what car can you name with a more badass trim level than "Time Attack"?

Also..dat hood.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > -Amateur 08/14/2013 at 00:34

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Don't forget that the Viper was designed in secret, without even Chrysler's approval. The whole project was done by engineers on their own time, and only got the official go-ahead from Chrysler after the design was finalized and (I believe) a working prototype was made.