SRT Viper

The sports cars fans now have new material from which to make posters. Chrysler has released new official pictures of the new generation of one of its most charismatic products. As you must’ve already seen many times, Viper will now be sold by the SRT division, but today received its price list. As always, some fans will disapprove it while others will start to write checks or raise their lottery expenses in order to park one at their garage as soon as possible. This car has already made its way as one of the modern classics.

Considering the aspects which made this car so famous, it’s easy to understand why there are many people criticizing the concept of its new generation. On the other hand, these people also have to remember that we’re at different times. Viper was known specially by its style. Its first appearance was made at 1989 as a Dodge concept-car, but taking attention for the fact that it was almost ready to be sold as a street car while anyone could think it would need a lot of changes to adapt itself. There already were the strong lines that remind of muscles, along with lights, doors and other items smoothly added to the external surface in order to maintain it’s overall organic shape. But its character was defined by a certain rusticity: the very first production Viper simply didn’t bring external door handles or even roof, being sold as a “permanent” roadster. But one very special part of this design was the enormous hood, which hides another huge feature of this car: its V10 engine was originally produced for Chrysler trucks, but became adapted to Viper and after that turned into its trademark specially due to the symbolism: offering this massive power without any kind of control systems gave it a combination of factors never achieved by any of its competitors.

However, there were some changes already at its second generation. It received a Coupe version and the roadster finally received a removable roof. The third one received a little face-lift and the fourth one came with improvements at the engine, but the time was changing. These times saw the 2008 economic crisis and lots of car companies getting closed or dangerously near that, including Chrysler, so Viper saw the biggest change at its history ever: after buying the Chrysler Group, Fiat ended Viper production two years later, but not forever. Basically, they just waited to return to financial stability and started to produce this new generation, whose first debut was made some months ago. The biggest gain was made with the decision of an entire reproject. Obviously they wouldn’t change it too much, but now Viper joins the same visual style as always with a way better technical part. If the external style can be considered as only an improvement of the original one, the interior became much more modern and comfortable, with state-of-the-art technologies in favor of safety, comfort and even some luxury – one of the nicest inside details is the entire-LCD high-definition dashboard. As the pictures show, now it’s possible to change several driving adjustments through it and even adjust the graphic part, which includes a big picture of the snake who characterizes this car.

The latest announcements of Chrysler have also brought some prices, from the US market: the initial version will cost US$ 99.390, while the GTS can be yours for US$ 122.390, making Viper a slightly cheaper car than one of its biggest competitors, Chevrolet Corvette. Both versions come with the V10 8.4 of 600 hp, always using manual transmission and rear traction… But this leads precisely to one of the discussion points among the fans. The new Viper has all of the modern safety systems, such as traction and stability controls, while none of the previous generations had ever dreamt of using. Some complain that with those changes Viper loses the rough driving which has always made it so different of the other super sports cars, even giving it the “men’s car” stereotype. But now it’s worth to repeat that sentence about the “different times”: there are increasingly strict safety rules, whose applications can only get much more intense for a car this fast. Viper is still a very-skilled-driver car, but became much more safer to everyone. It wouldn’t be worth to keep selling a car whose use would attract more and more complaints and even involvements in accidents because of the own car’s behavior. So the Fiat-Chrysler group decided to adapt the legend to the new days, and allow it to fascinate everyone for many more years.