It wasn’t too long ago that we were reporting about the all new American super car, the Devon Motorworks GTX set the single lap record for a production car at the historic Laguna Seca circuit in Salinas, California with a time of 1:35.075. Justin Bell, the owner of Devon, might have offended a few people at Chrysler when he gave them a low ball offer to purchase the Viper brand, because earlier today the American automaker tackled the infamous Corkscrew and managed to shave over a second off of the GTX’s lap time with an all new 2010 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR and Chrysler engineer Chris Winkler behind the wheel. The hard core track tuned Viper unofficially clocked in at 1:33:915, not only good enough to reset the record, but bring a bit more value to Chrysler’s halo car.
If you have enough patience to take a quick look over the documents released by Chrysler regarding their 2010-2014 Business Plan Meeting you will notice something that will make you very happy. Besides promises like "70% of vehicle line renewed by 2010 and 100% by 2012", there is another good news: the company has under consideration a Dodge Viper successor for 2012.
As you might now, the sports car will go out of production in July 2010, after four generations, and to be honest not quite such a big success. With a history started back in 2012, the Viper will end its life with a final run of 500 units, sold as a special edition.
But Viper’s fan can still hope! And it seems that not only there might be a replacement in 2012, but the car might also be influenced by Fiat owners.
The skies opened up and the sun shone down upon us here at Top Speed recently when we received a call from our test car supplier letting us know that they had something special in store for this weekend. What showed up later on that afternoon was a Viper Red 2009 SRT-10, never before had any shade of red been so adequately named. This is was not our first time getting behind the wheel of the 8.4 Liter ten cylinder convertible, but there is just something about this shade of red that pops along and when combined with our car’s optional lightweight forged rims, showing off those bright red brake calipers, that makes this venomous vehicle something special.
Anyone familiar with the interior of a Dodge Viper will tell you just how minimalist the cockpit of these cars can be, with a few select white face gauges in front of the driver and a few auxiliary dials stacked just off to the side, even the an AM/FM/CD player radio is nothing to write home about. However creature comforts are not what this car is about, even though the interior does looks nicer than we remember, perhaps due to an improvement in materials. One thing that was very familiar was the smell of the V10, the radiating heat it emitted and the feel of that six speed manual shifter vibrating in your right hand, that is because Team Viper set out to make the most visceral performance machine ever built in the U.S.; and they have succeeded. Unfortunately Dodge needed their car back so our pleasant surprise was untimely cut short, but any time spent behind the wheel is well worth it.
With the increase in displacement to a full 8.4 Liters, the maximum output of the V10 has gone up to an even 600 HP and 560 lb-ft of torque. The 2009 SRT-10 can accelerate from 0 to 60 MPH in just 3.5 seconds, run the standing quarter mile in 10.9 seconds @128 MPH and reach a top speed of 202 MPH; all while averaging and estimated 12 MPG in the city and a rather impressive 22 MPG when cruising at highway speeds. The only option that our 2009 Viper Red Dodge came with were a set of optional forged rims which brought the modern American muscle car’s rice tag up to $93,000; not too bad for the closest thing you can get to a 1968 Corvette.
When you’re driving on a busy thoroughfare, the last thing you’d want to happen is to get involved in a car crash. Unfortunately, when you have hundreds upon hundreds of vehicles jostling through traffic at any given time, one wrong move could spell disaster for you and for your precious ride.
In this particular incident, which was captured by a man driving a Subaru, by the way, a Dodge Viper was manoeuvring in and around traffic on a relatively light day out on the highway. Whether or not he was rushing to go somewhere or he was just showing off the power under his hood, the driver of the Viper got a little too aggressive on the road and as he was about to make yet another overtaking move, he mistakenly swerved onto a lane where the cars were stopped.
In his defense, he did try to brake as hard as he could, as evidenced by the smoke coming out of his tires. Unfortunately, it was all for naught as he ended up crashing onto the back of an innocent white van. Just goes to show that no matter how fast or powerful your car may be, it still has to abide by the conditions of the road ahead of it, and much to the driver’s dismay, his Viper ended up paying a pretty steep price for his over aggressive driving.
We won’t fault you if you can’t. This charred remnant was once a 2005 Dodge Viper and if there was ever any car accident that you don’t want to be in the middle of, this should take the cake. The driver of the car was cruising along the streets of Laurel, Mississippi when he lost control of his Viper while passing another car. As a result, his rear end gets dislodged, loses control of his vehicle and goes off to the side of the road.
If that wasn’t enough, he crashes his Viper into a tree, after which, it catches fire. The photo of the once-proud American muscle car is a gruesome sight, unrecognized beyond despair.
Now you’re probably wondering what became of the poor man behind the wheel of this car. Well, judging from the severity of his crash and burn – literally speaking, of course – he suffered two broken ankles and a broken right arm. Considering the extent of the crash, three broken bones in his body would probably be considered a blessing in disguise because quite frankly, it could have been much worse.
Allen Millyard is a British bike builder who likes to think BIG. Of course, this reflects on his work and this is how we ended up writing about his 500bhp motorcycle. Called the Millyard Viper V10, this two-wheeler is closely related to the famous Dodge Viper supercar because of a ’small’ detail: it is powered by the enormous 8-litre V10 engine.
We haven’t used the term ‘muscle bike’ so far, but we believe that this would be a good starting point. This thing is both long and muscular!
The impressive motorcycle caught MCN’s attention, so they made a fairly short video so far and plan to extend the subject in the August 26 and September 2 issues of the British motorcycle magazine. Follow the jump for MCN’s video.
The American tuning firm Hennessey Performance Engineering is more commonly known for turning potent production cars into powerful performance machines, like a boosted Viper that can beat a Bugatti from 0 to 200 MPH, back in 2007 they got the ball rolling to change all that. Just like Steve Saleen went from hot rodding Mustangs to producing the S7 super car, HPE announced that they would build the Hennessey Venom GT, named after their lineup of V10 powered dodge sports cars that they built their reputation with.
More recently the soon to be automaker announced that the Venom GT will be making its official debut at the Geneva Motor Show, except that compared to the car that HPE announced back in 2007, the model set to be unveiled in 2010 will be a bit different. Instead of the Hennessey Venom 1000 Twin Turbo Viper’s V10 power plant, a Hennessey tuned V8 will go into the mid ship position and instead of the optional sequential gear box, the new super car will only be offered with a 6 speed manual.
Weight should remain somewhere under the original 2,700 lb. limit allowing the 1200 HP 2010 Venom GT to sprint from 0 to 60 mph in only 2.4 seconds and can hit an out of this world top speed of 272 MPH. In order to handle that much acceleration the Venom will be equipped with a set of 14 inch carbon ceramic rotors with a pair of 6 piston calipers up front and equally sized rear rotors being squeezed by 4 piston calipers in the back.
Even if Chrysler is in a bit of a bind at the moment they are not giving up on their high performance purebred sports car, the Dodge Viper. The American automaker has announced that the Viper name will live on. Even better news is that Dodge has big plans for the super car, the company wants to transform it into their halo car, a vehicle that transmits the brand’s best attributes in a high performance application, one that is so desirable it undoubtedly has a tremendous marketing potential in car enthusiast/amateur racing circles, like what Mazda has done with the Miata ever since the RX-7 went off the market.
Rumors are saying that the next generation Viper will use a V10 version of the next-generation corporate V-8. This is a 90-degree engine would be modular from top to bottom as well as cylinder to cylinder. The centerpiece of the engine will be a flat-plane crankshaft from the Ferrari style V8; whereas a conventional cross-plane crankshaft is used for other FIAT variations, like the Maserati V8. The best part of the story is that the engine will have a good old set of American pushrods making the valves go up and down.
There is good news for American automotive enthusiasts and modern muscle car collectors coming from Detroit. Chrysler has announced that after unsuccessfully attempting to unload their high performance Viper line to the highest bidder, the pentastar brand has decided that the V10 powered back to basics modern day raw driving experience will continue to be made up of Mopar parts.
For many of us the Dodge Viper is by far the best car that has ever been produced by Chrysler and when the company announced that the brand had to be discontinued we were devastated. It is good news to know that the Viper will live on. We would surely miss the 2009 SRT10’s 8.4 Liter 600 HP V10 and the car’s sub 4 second 0 to 60 MPH time.
Mike Accavitti, President and Chief Executive Officer of Chrysler’s Dodge brand said that the “Viper has successfully captured the hearts and imagination of performance enthusiasts around the globe,” and that “We’re extremely proud that the ultimate American-built sports car with its world-class performance will live on as the iconic image leader for the Dodge brand." To date Chrysler has produced more than 25,000 Dodge Vipers since their start in 1992 and we would hate to see them stop.
After months of attempts to convince almost anybody within earshot to purchase the Viper brand from the fiscally challenged automaker; Chrysler has finally found a partner, although the deal had to work its way around a number of issues before coming to fruition.
The aforementioned issues included government intervention, restraining orders, and Supreme Court rulings - regarding the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, the two manufacturers have finally made hurdled all obstacles. As a result of this deal Chrysler now turns over to Fiat a number of its businesses, one of which is the Dodge Viper.
This, of course, comes a few weeks after Chrysler put the Viper on the market and much to their dismay, found out that it wasn’t so much of a bullish market as it was ‘no market at all’. The general tepid reaction towards the Viper’s sale reached a point where only one company –Devon Motorworks – made an attempted bid of…wait for it…$5.5 million!
Fortunately for Chrysler, Fiat swooped down and saved them and the Viper from a rather embarrassing fall from grace. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago when the Viper celebrated the production of its 25,000th car after a successful 17-year run as one of the most sought after sports cars in America.
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