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Old 07-06-2014, 08:00 PM   #740
King T

 
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Drives: 2010 2SS, 2011 Buick Regal Turbo
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
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Quote:
Originally Posted by v8 View Post
Its too bad that GM can't look past the Corvette and give the Camaro more, or equal power. Even with equal power it would be slower due to weight. There were a lot of people who said the Hellcat would not get more than 640HP, because thats what the Viper has. Good on Dodge for recognizing the Challenger and Viper are two different cars with different buyers.
I think it's more based on that Dodge knows they can sell more Hellcat Challengers than Vipers.

Chevrolet is not the only company with a performance Hierarchy
-A Lamborghini Huracan will never have more power than a Lamborghini Aventador
-A Porsche Boxster/Cayman will never have more power than a 911 (and Porsche is scared of that happening)

The power of the Hellcat could have been based on the sales of the Viper. It has had 2 years to take note and adjust the dialed in hp because of it. If the Viper had sold the numbers that Chrysler had projected (around 2,000/year) then I think the hellcat would have been capped some. With the Viper selling only 591 cars for the whole year in 2013, it is safe to say Dodge is choosing going with a hot hand and giving the Hellcat more than Viper power since it will most likely sell more than the Viper.

The all new Lamborghini Huracan goes for $237,000 and had 700 pre-orders in the first month available for order, while Vipers still sit on the lot.

My question is what does this mean for the Viper? It is said that the Hellcat can't physically fit in the current Viper, so that raises three things for me:
-Will the Viper get a hp boost in the V10 to put it back over the Challenger? It was said the engineers already had to work miracles to get the Gen 5 V10 to pass the emissions standards of today.

-Is this the end of the V10 Viper? We could be seeing a preview of the next Viper engine. But will people like the Viper having a "normal supercharged V8" like other cars in the industry, no longer be unique with a V10?

-Could this be a sign that this is the end of the Viper, and that Fiat (who also owns Ferrari) could care less about the Viper?
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Last edited by King T; 07-07-2014 at 01:16 AM.
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