ONE WICKED DODGE VIPER

[greg vess]

One of my last jobs selling Dodges which was short-lived because was a horrible location of the market was just so bad at that time was the Dodge dealership in Alpharetta there on Alpharetta highway. The used car department always had about eight vipers on the lot and we sold a lot of them via the Internet. Most of them just got picked up and taken to their owners after receiving funds electronically. There was one blue one with white stripes and I believe it was one of the earlier ones. That car had a package on it that was offered by a company that I can't remember who did it but it was a $50,000 package. It was nothing but motor and of course computer time tuning for the modifications. I often think about that car and how bad ass it was. When you started it up it idle perfect but it sounded like a Harley-Davidson. It had the most wicked chop in the idol you have ever heard and this is out of a V10 so it doesn't sound like a V8 idling. The camshaft in that thing was so enormous it was sinful. It's a heads, Cam and header package with tuning and all the supporting mods that comes with high lift camshaft and and heads and all that stuff. This car was so fast it was stupid. I often just sit and think about that car and what kind of man would go out and pay $60,000 for Viper and turn around and pay $50,000 for an engine package. Probably some idiot like me I bought a trans am and put more in it than I paid for the damn thing. I think I had probably put 25,000 put in that engine and suspension just a complete undercarriage makeover. Anyway you know what they say if you want to play Big you got to pay big!

 

[greg vess]

I think that car ended up selling right at about $37,000. That's what the market was holding on those older vipers in that year. The fact that it is so heavily modified probably scared a lot of Viper or would be Viper owners away but the one who bought that car got one hell of a deal. He got over $100,000 worth of car for $37,000 it might have been 42,000 I can't remember it but they were all selling somewhere right in between there. And this car looked brand spanking new.

 

[greg vess]

The year model was somewhere between 2001 and 2010. It was a blue and white striped ACR Viper. Now in that year you could get a VX-1 Viper that had 640 horsepower and over 500 ft pounds of torque. That was a special package you could could order. This car was supposed to be making somewhere above 700 horsepower. Naturally aspirated. Imagine putting a supercharger on that. Now that would be more in my realm of modifications. On those cars you had to have a certified Viper service technician work on those. There was only one or two at each dealership depending on the size of the service department. It's very extensive training on the Viper and all of its components. This is just a trivia thread just for the sake of spitting out information.

 

[coolformula]

Cool story........if you have unlimited money why not..........

I wonder where all the people work at that can afford vipers back tin the day for them prices. Your not working the 9-5 job........

 

[jpm2953]

Built several viper engines. Cool projects. 850+HP. Naturally aspirated. Dailey dry sump pan and pump. Gen 4 cylinder head conversion on Gen 3 blocks.

 

[spistols]

The old and original ARD Motorsports out of Flowery Branch used to trick these out all of the time. The owner was a MOPAR nut!

 

[greg vess]

Cool story........if you have unlimited money why not..........

I wonder where all the people work at that can afford vipers back tin the day for them prices. Your not working the 9-5 job........

You've got that right! I know a lot of them were leased. They would lease them for 3 years keep them under the mileage and go about their merry way. With performance cars like that sometimes they're just a novelty and the guy really doesn't want to buy one to keep forever but he wants to lease it just to see if he loves the car but once you've had one for a few years I guess the bug kind of wears off and you just turn them in. I've had several guys come in and flop down cash for them. Write a business check and I would take it to the bank and have it hammered and they would drive off in the vehicle completely paid for. Those are the guys that keep them for a long time and keep the car in a garage undercover and very low miles and have them serviced impeccably. At the time they were selling for around 67,000 when they were new for the ones that I'm talking about.
When I was leaving the business at the time around 2003 they were up around $84,000 for the new body style and they were not selling for sticker price you had to offer a good bit over the sticker price just even started negotiation. To be completely honest with you I like the older body style a lot better. The ones made after 2001 we're just absolutely beautiful especially the ACR. The base ACR just had I can't remember it was some handling features like a spoiler and a front fascia swap and maybe like 15 horsepower I think maybe the brakes had something different as well they were more set up for the track than just the basic Viper. But there were different packages that Mopar offered that would just make them look like 100% race cars. But I never saw one of those go through the dealerships I worked at and I worked at Marietta JEEP, Eagle which was owned by Marietta Dodge right next door and those were the first years they came out at the time I was working at that dealership. The thing about those cars is that people that wanted them wanted real low miles and absolutely clean and a perfect service record. Those are the ones that brought good money and they had to be absolutely impeccably maintained and a record of every little thing that was done to it. It would tell you from every time the oil was changed to when it had just a basic inspection and that had to be done by the certified Viper technician.
Just got up around 25 to 30,000 miles that's when the price jumped down considerably you could get them for the high 30s low 40s depending on the model. That's actually the right time to buy the car because all the depreciations gone and you still have a kick ass ride that has a ton of life left in it. They have what they call a monocoke design or rail through design it is an all-out racing design for structural rigidity I could go on all day long about the fascinating things on a Viper but I'll save you the reading time.