Published on May 2, 2013
Here's a close up look at the SRT Viper race car. The street version of the Viper SRT is also awesome, and it costs $99,995. The Viper SRT is the latest in the SRT Viper line of serious performance cars.
SOURCEInstead of making nine of the hand-built $104,480 two-seaters a day, production has been cut to six.
The cut shows how competitive the market has become for super-elite sports cars, never big moneymakers for manufacturers but always a chance to burnish the brand. The new Viper was a star of the 2012 New York Auto Show and went on sale earlier this year.
A Dodge fixture for year, Viper was reborn into Chrysler's performance SRT unit as a product in which Fiat, which owns Ferrari and Alfa Romeo, had a hand. As a pure American car, Viper was known for being raw and unrefined. The connection to Fiat, the Italian automaker which controls Chrysler Group, gave it a European touch.
Even though buyers get a free day at a raceway to learn how to drive it, dealers are apparently hesitant about selling the 640-horsepower car with a 10-cylinder engine, the News says.
Plus, the car doesn't have winter tires and sales dip as winter is coming. Viper is built at a factory in Detroit.
SOURCEHas the success of the new C7 Corvette killed the SRT Viper? A source in the supplier industry tells Autoline Daily that the Viper assembly plant will be shut down for 15 weeks. Chrysler says it will be shut for 11 weeks starting the week of April 14. The plant was originally going to shut for 8 weeks, but the shutdown was then extended as Viper sales have gone from bad to worse. The Conner Avenue plant in Detroit which makes the Viper was tooled to build 2,000 Vipers a year, but last year sales came to only 591 units, as reported by Ward’s. Last month only 44 Vipers were sold and inventory now stands at 412 day’s worth of unsold cars. Maybe the success of the new Corvette has something to do with it. Last month Chevrolet sold 2,438 Corvettes, up 148% from a year ago. The Corvette only has 34 days’ inventory.
SOURCESince then, SRT sold 324 examples of its halo sports car in North America, AutoGuide reports. April was the Viper’s most successful month this year, with 97 units delivered in the United States and 15 sold in Canada. Surprisingly enough, Canadian sales have climbed from 4 vehicles in January to 21 in June, while U.S. sales took a nose dive from 97 units in April to just 36 in June.
There’s no word as to how many SRT Viper will be built per day for the remainder of the year. Last year, production peaked at nine vehicles per day before SRT decided to slow things down and assemble only six units per day.
The 2014 SRT Viper is priced from $102,485 and can fetch more than $124,985 when selected in the range-topping GTS trim. The Viper costs twice as much as the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray and will likely be more expensive than the brutal 2015 Corvette Z06 .