Dodge Viper: End of the Road?

Production of the Dodge Viper super car may have come to an end, perhaps permanently. The Viper’s Detroit factory has been shut down, one of eight that Chrysler LLC plans to leave in bankruptcy court. Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on April 30th, with plans to sell its good assets to Fiat SpA.

Raising Dodge’s Visibility With A True Sports Car

The Viper project was hatched in the late 1980s as a way to bolster the Dodge brand while giving buyers an option to the Chevy Corvette, a pricey one at that. Never a big seller, the hand built Viper went into production in 1992 and only sold its 25,000 copy in 2008. Still, Viper raised Dodge’s visibility and proved to the world that life beyond K-cars was quite good.

Chrysler LLC attempted to sell Viper last year as one way to raise funds for the struggling automaker. The company indicated that there was some interest in Viper, but nothing transpired by the end of the year when Chrysler’s financial collapse took place.

Big Engine, Six Speed Gearbox

Powered by an 8.4L V10 engine and paired to a six-speed manual transmission, the Viper can go from zero to sixty in just under four seconds. Top speed is 196 mph; the Viper can complete the quarter-mile in under twelve seconds.

The starting price for the Viper is now $91,220 for the SRT-10 convertible and $91,970 for the coupe.  Pricing north of $100K is possible by choosing the coupe’s B package which includes custom badging, facsia improvements as well as technological and engineering enhancements.

A Buyer Could Step Forth

Though production of the Viper has ceased for now, a buyer could step forward to acquire rights to build the car. Essentially what bankruptcy court has allowed Chrysler to do is to separate its good assets from its bad assets in a bid to relaunch a newly restructured Chrysler within two months or so. That would allow Fiat to acquire the good assets and leave the bad to be settle separately.

At this point it would be pure speculation as to who might acquire Viper, a brand whose appeal is very limited, but they said the same of Studebaker Avanti. That car was built for decades after Studebaker shut down in 1963. Whether the same fate can be sealed for the Viper or not remains to be seen, but the possibility that the Viper will soldier on remains.

Related Reading — Is Chrysler Selling Its Viper Soul?