There's a saying in show business that says a performer should always leave them wanting more. That's another way of saying, know when to quit. And for the Dodge Viper, that's 2010. The Chrysler Group LLC five year plan announced earlier this month says this is the final year. That doesn't mean, however, that the Viper will slither quietly out of town.
Indeed, the Dodge Viper has never done anything particularly quietly, and according to Ralph Gilles, Dodge president and CEO, the final year with a production run of about 500 cars will be a celebration, making Vipers "as special as possible, as collectible as possible."
That started with setting a new lap record for production cars at Laguna Seca Raceway today, bettering a record set by a one-off exotic prototype (Viper-based) Devon GTS by a full second. In honor of that achievement, Gilles announced that a special Laguna Seca Edition of the Viper would be produced, with orders being opened up in the next few weeks. The Dodge Viper Laguna Seca Edition would be trimmed like the record car, with the red wheels and the red and black paint treatment, which Gilles noted was essentially an inverse of the paint job on the Viper that set the production car record at Germany's Nurburgring race track.
Gilles announced another special edition, one based on his personal Dodge Viper, nicknamed "Voodoo, based on my Haitian heritage, a bit of internal tongue-in-cheek joke." The car features a dark blue color with an offset stripe with a red highlight. Gilles also said that Snakeskin Green would be revived, brought back as an ACR color.
Dodge will be give the 2010 Dodge SRT10 ACR its world debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in early December.
Those, said Gilles, are just examples of some of the things Dodge will be doing with Viper in 2010, fanning the flames, as Gilles put it, of Dodge performance legend.
“We’re going to keep Dodge’s performance icon alive and well by not only producing some of the most special Vipers ever built, but we’re also investigating what the next-generation Viper is going to be,” said Gilles. “When we have partners across the ocean who are known as the best sports carmakers in the world, the future opportunities are huge.”
That, Mr. Gilles, should really leave them wanting more.
Illustration: 2010 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR being driven to a new production car lap record at Laguna Seca. Photo credit: Chrysler Group LLC
Below, Ralph Gilles speaks about the near term future of the 2010 Dodge Viper (Chrysler Group LLC video):
.
For email alerts of articles from the National Auto Review Examiner, click on "subscribe" above, or follow on twitter @AutoReview.
Comments