Turbo63,
To be honest, unless you get lucky and got one of the Vipers that supposedly never has a problem, I'm not
sure you would be happy with the car.
You seem to be a pretty carefull consumer, and the Viper
is all about raw emotion. Without the raw emotion to
outweigh all of the Viper's very real shortcomings, I'm
not sure too many people would be satisfied with their
purchase.
The cars are awesome fun when everything is working right and the car always evokes a lot of attention when driving it.
But it is hot, noisy, and prone to mechanical failures.
The build quality is on par with a Yugo as far as misaligned
body parts, gaps between doors, clunks and rattles.
I tend to overlook all the little stuff, like heat, gaps between the carpet and firewall, etc.
I tolerate the way the car tries to kill you when you hit rough pavement on a busy interstate and then the car decides to hop over a lane or two.
All of that is worth the fun and excitment of driving it hard.
But the only thing that really bothers me, is the mechanical problems and Dodge's lack of support.
But if I were more of a perfectionist and expected my $85k car to be comfortable, reliable, and well-built, as well as fast and pretty then I would be very, very unhappy.
Just my thoughts.
Good luck with whatever you decide!