A V8 Viper?
- Thread starter Zee
- Start date
I'm still not sure I get why everyone thinks the Viper suddenly needs to sells 10's of thousands of cars all of the sudden with the redesign. Historically the car has been a very limited production vehicle, usually only a few thousand a year. What's wrong with that? Dodge/Chrysler/SRT is a huge company with tons of other cars. What's wrong with having one that they just don't make or sell that many of? I don't think Audi sells many R8s, pretty sure Lambo didn't sell all that many Murcielagos either. Guessing Ferrari doesn't pump out a few hundred 599s a day. People keep saying that Viper is doomed because it doesn't make the company much money, but I think they keep forgetting that the company makes tons of other cars as well. Pretty sure they could not make the biggest profit margin on one car and still survive. There's no one car that will make everyone happy.
denniskgb
Enthusiast
Agree, its a limited niche market, regarding the viper.
It doesn't necessarily have to. As I understand it Lexus loses money on every LFA they sell, but they still keep it around because it's their premium "state of the art car". Granted the American manufacturer mindset is a little different, but I'd think as long as you're not losing money on a car keeping one around as a "feather in the hat" kind of vehicle wouldn't be such a bad thing as long as you're making enough money in other venues. If the car is an anchor weighing down profits and others are forced to carry the load to keep you in the black is different. I've seen the same problem at my company. We have one product we offer that has fairly consistently loses us money, but if we backed out of the marketplace we'd never be able to get back in. We keep it around just to keep our name in the business until we can try to fix the problem. If the Viper tanks as a whole and goes away for several years it would be awfully hard for people to take it seriously if it came back. I realize that this has sort of happened, but the difference is that the Viper was still at the top of its game when production ceased, it's not like it was driven out of the market because it was an inferior product. The American economy is what killed the Viper, not a lack of ability.
EllowViper
Enthusiast
CAFE standards will serve to limit the actual numbers that will be produced per se…ergo a manufacturer's average MPG computations across all models built. SO by keeping the Viper's production numbers low, the MPG penalty/impact (when figured into the overall MPG computation of all models produced) is minimal. If SRT were to produce 10,000 vehicles that had a collective MPG of 11 city/20 highway, those numbers would be "statistically significant" when added into the numbers game. If you recall the Plymouth Horizon/Dodge Omni that was produced at the Belvedere Plant off I-90 West of Chicago, they purposely built much more than the market demanded or could sell (many were built, sat on the lot, and were summarilly recycled-crushed just to meet the mandate CAFE MPG numbers for Dodge, Chrysler,Plymouth at that time). So it was cheaper to produce a high mileage POS car at a loss on order to offset a better selling, higher profit car that got worst MPG. I suppose there was a lot of analysis that goes into those decisions.Standards by model year, 1978-2011[edit]
| Model Year | Passenger Cars | Light Trucks | ||
| 2WD | 4WD | Combined | ||
| 1978 | 18.0 | |||
| 1979 | 19.0 | 17.2 | 15.8 | |
| 1980 | 20.0 | 16.0 | 14.0 | |
| 1981 | 22.0 | 16.7 | 15.0 | |
| 1982 | 24.0 | 18.0 | 16.0 | 17.5 |
| 1983 | 26.0 | 19.5 | 17.5 | 19.0 |
| 1984 | 27.0 | 20.3 | 18.5 | 20.0 |
| 1985 | 27.5 | 19.7 | 18.9 | 19.5 |
| 1986 | 26.0 | 20.5 | 19.5 | 20.0 |
| 1987 | 26.0 | 21.0 | 19.5 | 20.5 |
| 1988 | 26.0 | 21.0 | 19.5 | 20.5 |
| 1989 | 26.5 | 21.5 | 19.0 | 20.5 |
| 1990 | 27.5 | 20.5 | 19.0 | 20.0 |
| 1991 | 27.5 | 20.7 | 19.1 | 20.2 |
| 1992 | 27.5 | 20.2 | ||
| 1993 | 27.5 | 20.4 | ||
| 1994 | 27.5 | 20.5 | ||
| 1995 | 27.5 | 20.6 | ||
| 1996 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 1997 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 1998 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 1999 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2000 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2001 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2002 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2003 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2004 | 27.5 | 20.7 | ||
| 2005 | 27.5 | 21.0 | ||
| 2006 | 27.5 | 21.6 | ||
| 2007 | 27.5 | 22.2 | ||
| 2008 | 27.5 | 22.5 | ||
| 2009 | 27.5 | 23.1 | ||
| 2010 | 27.5 | 23.5 | ||
| 2011 | 30.2 | 24.1 |
ROCKET62
Has Left the Room!
When you see Chrysler having to close Conner - you almost have to ask yourself - why not give it a try? Only 500 Vipers were sold last year. And while I would like to boast about exclusivity - I'm also realize there is a business case that needs to be made. Does a bare bones Viper really water down what a Viper is? If you get someone hooked on an "entry level" Viper, do they move up to the next level, and the next level, and the next level?
If I recall correctly, Fiat is looking to take Chrysler public in October. I wonder if Wall Street would be as forgiving with the current sales number of the Viper product line. Those quarterly results come up in a hurry.
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TractionControlOff
Enthusiast
I wish Chrysler would build another sports car based off the Viper, but named something else, featuring a V8. Keep the Viper exclusive, but add something to the lineup that is a Corvette competitor.
Just to put this one to bed, Bugatti, Lexus, etc. only lose money on their halo cars because it's a numbers game-you're subsidizing their R&D for their bread and butter brands. Ever notice how alarmingly similar the Reventon interior/controls and the controls on the Aventador are? Or how the LFA's design language is now showing up in Toyota's new concept cars?
They use these cars to break new ground and push the research envelope, then they sell a small number of examples at obscene markup to cut back on their cost. They "lose" money on them, because they only count the research and the point-of-sale cost for the Veyron, and not the tens of thousands of other VW-Group cars that benefit from that technology and get a little bit better. Fat-cat buyers feel like they're practically stealing their new hypercar, the company looks like it cares about the brand so much that it's willing to sacrifice to push the envelope, and everyone wins. It's all fake. That's why cars like the One-77, LFA, Carrera GT, etc. exist, not out of some sort of empty "brand pride" or "brand status," but because their "loss" is actually amortized through the sale of hundreds or thousands of Vantage, Vanquish, IS, and 911 models.
The problem is that the Viper made its mark by being a Luddite car. It doesn't break new technological ground as a rule, so its usefulness as a tech-forward testbed is very limited, if it exists at all.
Wouldn't be the first Viper with a V8. The first prototype from 1989 had a 360 Chrysler V8. The "Defender" Viper from the TV series also had a V8 engine.
But a true Viper just wouldn't be a Viper without the V10 powerplant...
But a true Viper just wouldn't be a Viper without the V10 powerplant...
EllowViper
Enthusiast
Very true. The Viper was a parts bin car. Not a lot of R&D beyond just integrating current components under a new skin.
One thing that might irk several owners on that front though would be what happens when people start doing up the V8 car to outperform the "premium" big engine version? Easier to slap a supercharger on a Hemi and let it lose since it actually has the aftermarket behind it. Makes me think of the Gallardo/Mucielago setup, though admittedly I'm not real familiar with how the two stack up. As a consumer, if I bought the "big engine" car, I'd want to know when the baby version pulls up next to me that I'll beat it. Same way with a standard Vette/Z06/ZR1. Granted stuff other than straight-line performance might not stack up, so I guess it would be a pick your battle kind of thing.
I guess the bottom line to me would be that they couldn't just take a Viper and put a V8 in it and be done with it. I think you'd have to water down all the performance (brakes, tires, suspension, etc.), to keep the tiers appropriately separate so that when you buy one versus the other you know the difference. To me that means whole new car that's just under a Viper. Something like a lightweight Challenger or new platform all together.
Paul Hawker
Enthusiast
This has already been done the other way. At the VOI in Utah, Dodge showed a Challenger Drag Pak with a Viper v-10 in the engine bay, direct from the factory. It was a drag strip only design, and never street legal. It kicked the butt of all the Fords and Chevy factory effort with a well engineered chassis and power train.
The V-8 with supercharger will not fit in the Viper, and the DNA of a Viper is more to dominate the road courses of the World, not so much the drag strips. In the hands of some talented owners, the Vipers do very well on the 1/4 mile, but that is not where it was designed to rule.
The V-8 with supercharger will not fit in the Viper, and the DNA of a Viper is more to dominate the road courses of the World, not so much the drag strips. In the hands of some talented owners, the Vipers do very well on the 1/4 mile, but that is not where it was designed to rule.
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