2001 Dodge Viper Review

Driving the most powerful car in America would not be half as much fun if it also weren't the slinky, 185 mph Dodge Viper sports car.

With 450 horsepower from its V-10 engine, the thundering Viper trumps the high-performance 2001 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 model. The Z06 is the fastest Corvette ever made, but produces 385 horsepower and has two fewer cylinders than the Viper.

However, the Viper costs a bit more than the $46,855 Z06, which is more refined than its rival. The Viper RT/10 convertible I tested lists at $69,225 and the GTS coupe costs $72,225.

The 2001 Viper gets anti-lock brakes and new colors: Race Yellow and Sapphire Blue. It can be ordered with a $10,000 competition package that raises horsepower to 460 and has a race-style suspension. But the standard Viper is just fine. I mean, enough is enough.

The Viper has been a hit for such a racy, costly, limited-production car. More than 10,000 have been sold, and sales this year through August totaled 1,027 cars, against 839 in the same year-ago period.

The Viper was a Chrysler Corp. auto show concept car before it arrived for the mid-1992 model year as one of the wildest domestic cars ever built. Chrysler had a stodgy reputation, but the Viper showed it could make one of the world's most exciting cars. Many had forgotten that Chrysler's 300-series models were among the hottest U.S. cars in the 1950s and 1960s. And its "Hemi" V-8 was the strongest U.S. engine.

Interest in the Viper was so high at shows that top executives at Chrysler, such as car buff Bob Lutz, decided to build the Viper on a limited production basis with the help of legendary Cobra sports car builder Carroll Shelby.

"It's amazing that we got a car as wild as the Viper built by a big auto company that mostly built minivans and dull passenger cars," Shelby told me last year. "In the 1960s, when I built my Ferrari-beating Cobra sports cars, I didn't have to worry about safety, emissions and exhaust noise level laws. The Viper had to meet all such regulations."

The Viper has been refined a lot since its debut. The ride almost rattled fillings from your teeth, and the brake pedal had almost no travel, which made it impossible to modulate the brakes; it felt as if you were putting your foot against a stone wall when hitting that pedal, although stopping distances were short.

But this remains one of the most difficult cars to enter or leave, with low seats and wide door sills. Interior room is tight, but the bucket seats offer decent support. Gauges are easily read, although spread out all over the dashboard, and controls work smoothly.

The sound system is a joke, being overly complicated with tiny controls. That's not what you want in a ferocious car that calls for full driver attention.

Construction is fairly solid, but the driver's power window malfunctioned soon after I got the car. The hood seems about a mile long, and rear visibility is good with the $2,500 removable hardtop. But the Viper is so low that you can't be sure other drivers can see you.

Acceleration is awesome; merges into fast traffic or quick passing on highways makes it seem as if you're in a land-bound jet airplane.

The Viper is so fast and steering is so hair-trigger quick that a driver should keep both hands on the steering wheel at all times. The ride is generally comfortable, but gets jittery on some roads.

This is an open-road car, although it's noisy at highway speeds. It's tiring in town because it has a heavy, long-throw clutch and the shifter requires lots of muscle. The only place for your left foot is under the clutch.

Fifth and sixth gears of the manual gearbox are mostly overdrive gears. At 70 mph in sixth, the engine is loafing at 1,500 rpm.

The Viper essentially is just a fair-weather weekend toy. But so is a Ferrari, and the cheapest Ferrari costs well over $100,000.