The Dodge Viper – America’s Sports Car

460 horsepower and a sexy 3400 pound two seat body? Does this sound like a muscle car? You bet it does. Not many cars can safely be called America’s sports car. For good reason. The cars that could live up to that name are some pretty great automobiles. There’s the Chevrolet Corvette, of course. This car’s 50 year journey from its birth as a six cylinder novelty car to the all world high performance vehicle it is today is one of the auto industry’s great success stories. There’s also the Shelby Cobra. For six years, this incredible machine raced heads up against the world’s greatest racing cars and beat the pants off them. On every race course from Riverside to LeMans. Through the years, there have been a few others. From designers like Sydney Allard and Frank Curtis, who in the 50s managed to produce a few hand built road racers to Briggs Cunningham, whose Chrysler’s Hemi-powered sports cars were awesome blends of good looks, ingenuity, and true American horsepower.

But today, one car is a serious challenger for the right to claim the title of America’s sports car. Its name is Viper and just like another famous snake of a few years earlier, the Viper’s bite is deadly. The Dodge Viper was created for the sheer pleasure of fast driving. Its design omits a lot of things people have come to expect from Chrysler corporation like luxury accessories, lots of cargo space. This little car isn’t going to appeal to a lot of people but Chrysler doesn’t see the Viper as a mainstream automobile. This car was built for taking it to the limit Reflects Gary Lashinsky: “The Viper is an in your face, you wish you could be like me type car. I think there’s no car in the world, not a Ferrari, not a Porsche, not a Corvette, no exotic that says it more like Viper. It’s a true exotic but it truly is an American muscle car.”