Chrysler To Temporarily Shut SRT Viper Plant Due To Slow Sales

[King T]

Originally Posted by motorhead

Viper is priced out of the market for it's target buyer. There is a ton of things on this car that is completely unnecessary that cost a ton to provide the same performance.

I agree. Chrysler need to stop sending these fully loaded $140k+ Viper GTS out to these test drives and reviews. This is from Autoblog:

The base price of a premium GTS model sits at $124,985. Bumping up the sticker on my press car was the $7,500 GTS Laguna Interior package (Sabelt premium seats, Alcantara headliner, SRT steering wheel, SRT premium audio and more), $5,000 for painted black racing stripes, $350 for red seatbelts, $1,100 for the forged wheels and a $2,600 gas-guzzler tax. Including $1,995 for destination, the total MSRP was $140,930.

This is also what they have flooded the dealerships with, and that is why they are still sitting there. I know they want to show off the new interior because the previous Vipers were bagged on it so much but now the majority thinks that this is the Viper's actual price.

First thing, is get rid of the GTS. There shouldn't be a two tier Viper system. It should be the SRT base as the start (which started at $99,000 its first year), with the GTS model's two-mode Bilstein DampTronic shock absorbers as an option (like MRC for Corvette). Then IF WHOEVER WANTS TO make all of the good interior, seats, etc. options just like Porsche. You can easily run up a price of a 911 in options, but at least that will be what the owner does or doesn't want on the car.

[TastyBake]

Viper's not going anywhere for a while.

My guess is the next gen will be ferrari based. The Hellcat will be more powerful...for now.

[Front Runner]

Originally Posted by Highland Ranger

Issues with the viper are:
- Price
- Quality
- Refinement

Best is the Head2Head video where the guy says he expects the car to punch him in the crotch at redline.

Bottom line is there are just better cars out there to spend your money on.

Too bad too, this thing was a legend. I'd like to see them give Corvette a run for its money - we all benefit from that kind of competition.

But the biggest issue is the price IMO. I've always loved the Viper and would love to own one but I feel they are overpriced. If SRT deals with the price issue, it'll be a winner.

[Front Runner]

Originally Posted by motorhead

Viper is priced out of the market for it's target buyer. There is a ton of things on this car that is completely unnecessary that cost a ton to provide the same performance. The C7 has obsoleted the new Viper in a matter of months.

Very, very true.

[King T]

Could Dodge’s rumored ‘Hellcat’ V8 outshine the Viper’s V10?

Chrysler seems to think giving engines cool names will imbue them with special powers.

First came the fuel-efficient “Hurricane” four-cylinder and now, at the other end of the spectrum, we have the “Hellcat”.

The company is rumored to be preparing a 6.2-liter supercharged V8 for use in the next Dodge Challenger SRT. While the company hasn’t even confirmed the hellacious engine’s existence, reports suggest its power output will be in the 580 to 640 horsepower range.

Note that last figure matches the power rating of the SRT Viper’s 8.4-liter V10. Could it be that a hot-rodded version of the Challenger will rival the near-supercar Viper in grunt?

SRT president and CEO Ralph Gilles hinted at this possibility in an interview with Hot Rod, when the magazine suggested Chrysler was losing to Ford and Chevrolet in the Detroit horsepower war.

“We have a situation where, you know – we may have a situation – where the flagship car is not the most powerful car in our arsenal; how do we explain that to ourselves?” He said there is an “internal horsepower race” going on at Chrysler.

In the same comment, Gilles said SRT will focus on “usable horsepower” and improving vehicles’ power-to-weight ratios, presumably as an alternative to increasing horsepower for its own sake.

While SRT could probably extract more power from the Viper’s V10 (perhaps by giving it a supercharger of its own), it’s admittedly hard to see where it can go from here.

A more powerful Viper would be faster, but pushing the car further into supercar territory would require a level of refinement to rival that of Ferrari or Porsche, and to keep minimally-trained owners from killing themselves.

So as SRT seeks to improve the Viper, other factors will become as important – if not more important – than increasing horsepower.

As for a Hellcat-powered Challenger producing as much grunt as a Viper, keep in mind that there’s already one Detroit muscle car that’s accomplished that feat. The outgoing Ford Shelby GT500 Mustang has 662 hp, courtesy of a 5.8-liter supercharged V8.
The GT500 has always been more about top speed than handling, but a two-seat sports car like the Viper has to excel at both.

Maybe SRT has decided to give its super sports car more than just a venomous bite, while giving enthusiasts another high-horsepower model to drool over.

[King T]

Originally Posted by TastyBake

Viper's not going anywhere for a while.

My guess is the next gen will be ferrari based. The Hellcat will be more powerful...for now.

MAYBE Alfa based. Sergio wouldn't dare let Chrysler share anything with Ferrari!

[King T]

During an interview for the April issue of Hot Rod Magazine, SRT chief Ralph Gilles let it slip that once the new Hellcat motor lands in the 2015 Challenger, the V10-powered Viper may find itself outgunned by its own siblings:

"We have a situation where, you know - we may have a situation - where the flagship car is not the most powerful car in our arsenal... how do we explain that to ourselves? So we have an internal horsepower race as well as an external one."

I can only see one of 3 things coming about from this:

1) This truly means the end of the Gen V Viper

2) This means the end of a V10 Viper. With a supercharged (presumably cheaper to manufacture) V8 that makes more power than the V10, why would it stay?

3) Sergio doesn't care at all about the Viper


There are hierarchy to performance cars. The top Camaro should never be above the top Corvette. The top Cayman will never reach deep into 911 territory (and Porsche really makes sure that happens), the Lamborghini Huracan will not top the Aventador, etc...

As much as I wanted the ZL1 to match the GT500 hp-wise I fully understand why it couldn't. Ford did that on purpose, putting the hp level at a point the Camaro couldn't touch it without going over the ZR1's head..which would never happen. The Mustang answers to no one so it can do that, but we all know if the Ford GT was still around it would not have seen anywhere close to 662hp.

Having the Challenger possibly outpower the Viper would be kind of a slap in the face of Gen V owners who thought they were buying the most powerful vehicle Chrysler/SRT had to offer.

And I don't see the Viper's V10 going up in power either because this Hellcat is coming in with matching or more hp.

[King T]

Dodge SRT Viper: A Speed Demon With Too Much Engine
As fast and ornery as the V10-powered beast is, it would be better with a V8

RUMORS OF THE new Viper's livability are wildly exaggerated. While the fifth generation of Chrysler Group's V10-powered, front-engine roadster/coupe is much improved, rest assured America's supercar remains a huge pain in the seat heaters. It's still a devil's deal of design trade-offs—the agricultural gearshift linkage, side exhaust pipes that scald your leg when you step out, acute cabin claustrophobia, lousy outward views—all in the service of this thing, this joyous, hurts-so-good masochism of the Viper experience, which is strangely like a question-your-sanity experience.

Example: At about 70 miles per hour, cruising down the highway with the Tremec six-speed gearbox in overdrive, my 2013 SRT Viper GTS Coupe's cabin thrummed in the perfect musical note of F, so that any song played on the audio system that wasn't in the key of F sounded horrible. How many times can you listen to Elton John's "Levon"? What I'm saying is that if you drive around in your Viper with your own superhero theme music playing in your head, it had better be in F.

So, Viper owners, come on, what gives? Didn't mama love you? What could possess you to go around leading, as it were, your own one-car parade, to so disorder the public peace, to sport such an obvious automotive codpiece? If automobiles are costumes, Viper owners are attending life's masquerade dressed as randy jesters.

In a moment I'm going to tell you more about how fun it is to nail the throttle in third gear in a Viper pointed down a racetrack—very, extremely, with a hellish, slobbering exhaust note—but for now, a question: Why? Why does the Viper exist?

Born in 1989 as a concept car at the Detroit auto show, the Viper was Bob Lutz's idea. In those languishing days, Mr. Lutz, then Chrysler's president, imagined the Viper as a modern Shelby Cobra, the bratty racing roadster of '60s glory days. It was to be an image builder for Chrysler, then in full dreariness, and a badly needed morale boost for employees. It wasn't necessarily for-profit, but neither could the Viper team blow a lot of development cash.

Since Chrysler wasn't making a suitable big-block V8 at the time, Mr. Lutz suggested using a reworked version of the firm's great honking 8-liter V10 truck-based engine, used in medium-duty pickups—and, I think, drug-running submarines and scary Russian carnival rides and other malign machinery.

The V10 decision, made in the spirit of frugal expedience more than two decades ago, was the fateful moment. From then to now, the character of this car—its sound, its weird, off-center cockpit ergonomics, its endless hood—has been dominated by the piston-chucking, tire-fogging pushrod V10. I call it Rambo.

Flash forward to Aug. 22, 2010, in the dark days after the bankruptcy, bailout and Fiat alliance. With an impassioned plea to "save an icon," Ralph Gilles, Chrysler Group senior vice president in charge of product design and, at the time, president and CEO of Dodge, persuaded Fiat and Chrysler chief Sergio Marchionne to approve the fifth-generation Viper program, but only on the condition that Viper be a positive business case. That was a shame, since losing a boatload of money in the low-volume supercar business is much easier.

This was another fateful moment. The time to bring Viper into the modern era of supercars—with a much lighter, more compact and more emissions-favorable powerplant—was the Gen V overhaul, the flagship of the new SRT brand (Street & Racing Technology). But just as in 1989, there was simply no scratch for that, and Team Viper was obliged to go with the mega-motor it had.

This was the moment when Viper became a plaster saint, an icon too venerable for its own good, a purveyor of nostalgia engineering. The result: The new Viper is, and drives like, a highly modernized, insanely fast and powerful relic.

It wasn't easy dragging the Viper into modernity. In fact, while Mr. Gilles—43 years old, TV-handsome—gets the credit for saving Viper, I would like to salute Dick Winkles, the engineer responsible for getting the boat-anchor V10 past federal emissions standards. As told in Maurice Liang's excellent book "SRT Viper: America's Supercar Returns," the Gen IV's onboard diagnostics couldn't detect all misfires throughout the RPM range (because a single cylinder misfire in a 10-cylinder engine with its 90-pound crank spinning away at thousands of rpm is a very subtle event). The feds said to come back when the car was "100% compliant." Uh-oh.

Not only did Mr. Winkles get the hulking pushrodder past the feds, he and his team squeezed an additional 40 horsepower and 40 pound-feet of torque out of it, while cutting engine weight (aluminum flywheel, composite intake runners and incremental light-weighting of valve-train and other assemblies). The lighter flywheel adds a new goose-iness to Viper's throttle response and makes it that much more steerable with the gas pedal. The Viper's six-speed manual gearbox has been smoothed over quite a bit—yet remains capable of balking—and the clutch-pedal throw is long but comfortably weighted. Heel-and-toe position is excellent, in part because the V10 engine crowds the pedals.

Look, I'm not saying the new Viper isn't stupendously quick and fast. It will freak you out faster than getting a text from Anthony Weiner. The big, bellowing, on-the-cam torque (600 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm) hits you between the shoulder blades like a bag of wet cement. Zero to 60 mph (with launch control activated) comes in under 3.5 seconds, and in some time less than 8 seconds, the Viper crosses the 100-mph mark. This is a car that effortlessly and serenely generates 1-g-plus cornering. The Viper absolutely loves the new Pirelli PZero (or optional Corsa) tires, foot-wide monster meats with a lovely, progressive feel as they finally start to give up grip. The steering is heavy and satisfyingly darty (2.5 turns, lock-to-lock).

To drive the new Viper in anger is to experience that old, familiar atavistic thrill, like running down and eating a deer.

And I'm not saying the new Gen V Viper isn't a vastly better car. Chief among the improvements is the handsomely sculptured stitched-leather interior, with a modern TFT display replacing the old, wretched one. On my scorecard, the second major improvement is a beautifully cast aluminum X-brace suspended across the engine bay that, to no one's surprise, helps improve the rigidity of the steel space-frame by 50%. And this isn't some vague claim of improvement in an obscure metric; it makes a real, palpable difference in on-track drivability. The new Viper is quite a bit more manageable cornering at high-g's, with much less skittering of the front tires, neutral-throttle, corner entry.

Because stability control is now federally mandated on all cars, the Viper chassis team spent a lot of time tuning the system to provide only the most minimal and transparent intervention, with multiple modes, including the all-important off switch.

However, what I am saying is that every good thing about the new Viper could be that much better with a different engine. As a product, and as a driving experience, the Viper remains true to its origins, a unique mix of passion and program cost-containment.

Carbon-fiber body panels, adjustable Bilsteins coil-overs, the works. You can even have your snake prepared in two ways: the minimalistic SRT Viper ($102,485) or the luxed-up Viper GTS ($124,985) with the Pirelli summer tires and assorted creature comforts. Alas, with fuel economy of 12/19 mpg, city/highway, Viper is subject to a $2,600 federal gas-guzzler tax.

[Camaro_Corvette]

Originally Posted by Highland Ranger

Too bad too, this thing was a legend. I'd like to see them give Corvette a run for its money - we all benefit from that kind of competition.

Agreed, but the good thing is that Corvette isn't targeting the Viper. The corvettes basically targeting everyone And apparently the camaro is starting this trend as well. Which is perfectly fine with me

[TastyBake]

Problem is the V-10 is a wedge engine w/ limited choices for tech. For example, the designer stated it will never have direct injection due to the design.

If they can make a turbo V8, then go for it. Else, make a refined V10 but I don't think dodge can do that.

If they want it to sell, gotta make it more high tech. Else, folks will get a corvette.

[mikeyg36]

Originally Posted by TastyBake

Problem is the V-10 is a wedge engine w/ limited choices for tech. For example, the designer stated it will never have direct injection due to the design.

If they can make a turbo V8, then go for it. Else, make a refined V10 but I don't think dodge can do that.

If they want it to sell, gotta make it more high tech. Else, folks will get a corvette.

It has nothing to do with the engine. Hell, I'd take that V10 over the LT4, but not for 20k-30k more. If Chyrsyler can't bring cost down that car is screwed, and it's a shame.