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TOPGEAR DOG

By TOPGEAR DOG
in Automotive Discussion

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Baltoman Grand Master

Baltoman

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Posted

here's the full story

 

 

 

Bob Nardelli’s no Bob Lutz.

 

Want proof?

 

Word is out that Chrysler is planning to kill off the Viper.

 

In case you may have forgotten, the Viper was Bob Lutz’s creation, back when he was ‘the man’ at Chrysler. He used the Viper as a way of energizing the company and simultaneously developing techniques to shorten the design cycle. What he came up with was a car powered by a V-10 truck engine that captivated people for whom raw and undiluted power was the raison d’etre.

 

The Viper was part of the rescue plan for Chrysler, a plan which succeeded so well that the company became the apple of Daimler-Benz’s eye. (We all know the rest, of course.)

 

Somewhere in the process, the press began calling Lutz “Maximum Bob.”

 

But, now there’s another Bob at Chrysler: Bob Nardelli, i.e., “Minimum Bob.”

 

And Nardelli apparently intends to axe the Viper.

 

He has some reason for doing so, though.

 

Sales in the high-end performance segment have been down. Porsche’s sales in that segment were down 7% in 2007. BMW’s sales in that segment dropped even more precipitously: 18%. The aging Mercedes SLK lost 30% of its sales. Even the segment busting Corvette dropped, by 8%, though the Corvette ended up gaining market share due to its competitors’ larger losses.

 

But the Viper?

 

Down 70%. Only the Ford GT did worse, by becoming extinct.

 

If the Viper is officially cancelled, Minimum Bob may merely be administering last rites to a snake already dead.

 

When Bob Lutz first put the Viper on the road, he did it from the parts bin with minimal fancy engineering. While that Viper’s basic brute strength was a large part of its appeal, it was also a very unsophisticated car. It has remained an unsophisticated brute, one ill-suited to the dictates of new CAFE fuel economy regulations which Chrysler itself admits it is going to have a tough time meeting.

 

And, of course, Chrysler’s not exactly awash in cash. GM upped the ante far more than Chrysler could afford with the Corvette ZR1, a car more powerful, more sophisticated, better handling, and newer than the Viper. Chrysler has better uses for its resources, financial and intellectual, than battling with GM for the fastest Detroit hot rod.

 

Still, it’ll be sad to see the Viper go.

 

Because the Viper was the last muscle car.

 

Over the years, Detroit manufacturers have repeatedly tried to reinvent the muscle car, without actually building one. Ford keeps giving us “Bullitt” Mustangs. Nice, to be sure. But not muscular. They do the GT500 version, and just end up muscle bound. Chevy, on the other hand, has done even more poorly. In the old days, you could order a Vette and check only two boxes on the option sheet: M-22 and 427. Can’t order a Vette with the killer motor and radio delete today, though. The ZR1 probably comes with navigation standard.

 

And, Porsche. Laughable. You can actually option out the seatbacks: at over a grand. That way they can match the optional appointments to the instrument panel. (Don’t ask how much – but if you want to have fun spending money you don’t have, go to Porsche’s website and build yourself a Carrera S.) Porsche’s are the cars you drive because you figure they’ll park it in front. They’re no longer the cars you drive because you want to go fast.

 

But Chrysler built a muscle car, long after the species had been called extinct. It was as though Woodward Avenue had been caught in a time machine.

 

Sure, Vipers were pretty crude. But that was the essence of the muscle car that was, back then, the last frontier between the real liberty of the car and the politically correct future.

 

That, of course, went away when we got unleaded fuel, 5 mph bumpers, and K Cars.

 

Until Lutz came along and decided to sell a muscle car. Right after the government rescued his company.

 

I remember passing a Viper on the way back from the Indianapolis 500. It was that same 500 that saw David Davis, then the guru of one of Rupert Murdock’s better investments, Automobile Magazine, drive his Viper coupe – white with blue racing stripes, America’s racing colors - to the Embassy Suites at which I was staying. It just so happened to be the main hotel for the Viper Owner’s Club. I knew the car the instant I saw it.

 

It wasn’t that Davis validated the car. Actually, I thought his was over the top. Overdone. But there were a lot of Vipers in that parking lot, and there was something about them that appealed.

 

Davis’s car was wrong because it had a top.

 

On the trip back home, we were pretty much cruising.

 

I was driving an Impala SS. Not the thing that they call an SS today. Nor the thing they called an SS back when. It was the Impala SS that got the black on black treatment, the police package suspension, leather inside, and the LT-1 V-8 motor that was the base motor in the Corvette. It was the SS that GM built after a beer distributor had his Impala customized like that and the design chief happened to see it because they both belonged to the same country club.

 

On that trip back, on the interstate, it was raining. I had the Impala on cruise. I came up behind a black Viper and changed lanes to pass. The guy in the Viper had the top up and he was slower than I. You got the impression that he wasn’t having fun, that he was battling the car in circumstances for which it was not intended.

 

He was kinda hunched over, too. It seemed there was not a lot of headroom in that car with the top up.

 

But I still remember his smile.

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DriftNismo Mentor

DriftNismo

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*claps* Good story. But the Viper can't die!!!!! If the Viper dies, there won't be muscle cars anymore (like you said). Mustangs arent muscle cars. Mustangs were the things that tagged along with the scene that Chargers and Camaros started. They're the baby muscle cars, like 1.4 Civic is to the Civic Type R. Like the Gallardo is to the Murcielago R-GT. Like the V8 Vantage is to the V12 Vanquish S. The only muscle car left will be the S7, and thats more of a supercar than a muscle car.

 

I hope they don't kill off the Viper.

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DriftNismo Mentor

DriftNismo

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I didn't say it started the muscle car scene, but it was a huge part of it. I also said the S7 was a supercar, but i thought i mentioned Saleens Mustangs there, so sorry.

The biggest muscle car scene was during the early seventies, which is when i meant the Mustang was just tagging along, it wasn't anywhere near as muscley as the other cars, which is what i was comparing it to. Imo the Mustang isn't a proper muscle car because it's nowhere near as powerful as the other muscle cars during the biggest muscle car scene period.

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