The engineers are not the problem. They are dedicated gearheads. Chrysler sales, including SRT's sales are doing well. I do not think that a "good part of our crowd" has migrated anywhere. I do think that a number of our crowd have acquired additional vehicles. The economy has also forced some members to liquify assets including their Vipers. Its my experience that not many Viper owners use the stock power in any meaningful way. They do not road race, drag race or do standing mile events. I am sure that SRT and Chrysler know this through their market studies.
Chrysler has little incentive to take the extra risks involved. The entire SRT product line is a very small percentage of sales. Yearly Corvette and Mustang production far exceeds any year of Viper production. There is also the issue of internal competition betwen "Mopar Edition" vehicles, Mopar performance parts and SRT products. The supercharged vehicles you mention above, are considerably easier and cheaper to modify. Would I like to see things return to the flexibility of calibration present in the Gen III Viper? Yes. Will it happen? I doubt it. But I appreciate your passion. Keep trying. Maybe the windmill of upper Chrysler management will take note and compromise a bit on the issue.
In the meantime there is nothing, except cost, preventing someone from making meaningful mods to a Gen IV vehicle. There are many threads discussing modification projects involving Gen IV vehicles including twin turbo charging applications. Some of these posts have discussed the Gen IV calibration at length in the context of using an additional AEM or Motec controller.
Yes, the engineers are a big part of the problem. They shouldn't be telling people not to mod. their Gen 4s or making them afraid of doing so.
Instead, they should be providing Solutions with performance parts and kits and releasing them online so we gen 4 guys could buy them to improve our cars even more. Our cars don't have enought resource in parts and that needs to change or we will always remain small and will never grow. I want the viper and SRT to grow, don't you?
For example, The gen 4 pistons are the weakest link of the short block, so why not release a forged piston upgrade kit with rings. Stage 1, 2 and 3. Each one with different compression so the customer has the choice to upgrade their engine pistons if they want to and with whoever they want to build the engine with. Yes, sounds stupid but, is that simple. FORD and GM do that and it works exponencially well increasing their sales in parts and cars.
Nowadays, it is not only about the new released car like the new generation 5 that it's coming out in a few months. It is about what is going to be surrounding that car performance wise, growing with it and improving for the future. That would only benefit chrysler. People wanna know!
That being said, nothing against the folks that will buy a sports car to live it stock but, please, allow the others with more need for speed to do whatever the hell they want without being so prohibitive. Let the owner or tuner gain some or complete acess to modify their cars and be fully happy with it.
Also, some other people just want to say that they are fast and pop up the hood in car shows. Those would also buy the programmers, kits (you name it)just for braggin rights and that would cause more profit for chrysler. It will never hurt to surround a sport car or muscle car with even more speed parts and looks if they are affordable. Also, research and marketing has to be done more about parts among those car enthusiasts and owners and that I am more than sure they have to learn more from Ford and GM.
Yes, I know I am very passionate about the viper and my cars. Passionate but, not paranoid or blind and never careless. I can see what excites me about my car and what not and how could be improved but when you look out there and find NOTHING available it really makes you consider doing something different or moving to a different crowd. I play on the winning team and am performance friendly and will never let some engineer dictate fear in my ears simply because he thinks his way of doing things is the only right one. I will move to a different car brand to the winning one if the one I was playing for doesn't want to evolve... Know at least 3 viper owners that are trading in their cars for 13 gt500s just because the car is so tempting to do whatever the hell you want!
And who said that a viper is more track oriented to all the owners? Some will never drag race some will never road course, some will only drift with a paxton like yours you name it....
Try to put yourself in the skin of us gen 4 owners and having your lovely paxton with out an option to be calibrated. Would you be happy if you had to spend 6k+ to have an option to gain accessability to your ecu to tune the supercharged engine??
" Driving a generation 4 viper without an engine calibrator on the market is like keeping a black mamba inside a tiny dark tank its whole life eating only frozen mice. It will never really release its VENOM POTENTIAL to the world".
Also if this is the case, why is Ralph and other people at SRT bragging and winking that the new snake has forged pistons and will be mod friendly?!
