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Never Stop Driving #135: Viper Nation
Back in the late 1980s, crazy surged through the halls of Chrysler Corporation. After narrowly avoiding the bankruptcy grim reaper thanks to the cheap and cheerful K-car platform, the scrappy automaker brought the party back with the Dodge Viper concept at the 1989 Detroit auto show.
Raw and unhinged, the production Viper that followed was the spiritual successor to the Shelby Cobra. Many Chrysler executives, including Bob Lutz, were gearheads, and Carroll Shelby was then juicing K-cars to create affordable performance rockets like the Daytona Shelby, even as the company reaped most of its profits from its pioneering K-car–based minivans. The first Viper didn’t even have a top, and a clumsy canvas covering was added at the last minute.
I was transitioning into adult life around this time, and a year-long campaign had landed me a gopher gig at Car and Driver. Dispatched to wash and gas a test Viper, I foolishly did what any other car-crazy 21-year-old would: I floored it down an empty two-lane. My memory is fuzzy, but I recall an immediate forward lunge—awesome!—and then violent side-to-side darting while the roadster bounced off pothole patches. In just a few seconds driver turned to passenger and one hop pirouetted the car toward the ditch. As the tires squealed and the landscape spun, I saw my career ending before it started. The right front tire touched the grass on the other side of the gravel shoulder before I somehow gathered the Viper back up. Naturally, I didn’t breathe a word about this to anyone back at the magazine offices.
Ever since, I’ve been grateful to the Viper for that schooling, a reminder that one foolish mistake could send me back to my first job out of college, a boring gig for an energy company inspecting coal chimneys atop factory buildings. I’ve also long wondered how a seemingly responsible automaker found its way toward selling such an uncouth and charismatic machine as the Viper. To find out, I recently interviewed two key retired Chrysler engineers who worked on the Viper program from the beginning. Herb Helbig joined the Viper team as the manager of vehicle synthesis, a catch-all title that later evolved into “The Gatekeeper,” because he made sure the car’s mission wasn’t diluted by, say, a cupholder. I also included Dick Winkles, the engine guru who was recruited to develop the Viper’s V-10. He later created the version that won its class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and his dedication also earned him a nickname, “Mr. V-10.”
You can listen to the entire conversation, for free, on Hagerty’s Never Stop Driving podcast (Apple and Spotify) or watch a video version here. One theme that I often hear when I talk to those who work on our favorite cars is passion. You’ll hear it in the excitement these two gentlemen have for working on the Viper, their struggles in bringing it to market with limited resources, and even their reverence for the engineering facilities used. The car business is so fascinating thanks to the creativity and energy of people like Helbig and Winkles, who create the cars we covet. And because of people like Tadge Juechter, longtime Corvette chief engineer, whom we recently profiled.
And then there’s former Lamborghini engineer Claudio Zampolli, another automotive dreamer. In the latest edition of his Revelations video series, my colleague Jason Cammisa delved into Zampolli’s exotic Cizeta-Moroder V16T, the first hypercar, a title it earned thanks to its 16-cylinder engine. As we’ve often seen, dreams sometimes turn into damaging obsessions, and that’s what happened to Zampolli. You won’t believe the twists and turns of the Cizeta tale, including a lawsuit involving Jay Leno.
Last weekend, I headed to northeast Florida for the Amelia Concours d’Elegance, a not-to-be-missed car gathering that included parties, a Broad Arrow auction, and too many cars to list. See the highlights here.
To mark the start of the IndyCar season, the racing series created a handful of terrific commercials that end with the words, “Welcome to the fastest racing on earth.” NHRA drag racers, who routinely crest 300 mph in just 1000 feet, were not pleased. During last weekend’s Gatornationals, drag racer Bob Tasca used a win as an opportunity to rant and say what many felt.
The driving season is almost here in Michigan, and that has me dreaming of this 2007 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 that’s being auctioned on Hagerty Marketplace. Back when the GT500 was new, I wrote that it was a “competent all arounder,” a verdict that seems conservative now, when I am inclined to spend the summer using its 500 horsepower to do wicked burnouts all over southeast Michigan.
Have a great weekend!
Larry
P.S.: Your feedback and comments are welcome.
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When the Vipers first hit the local dealership, a fellow got to take one for a test drive. He’d barely left the lot, nailed it, lost it, and crashed it into a concrete barrier. The protocols for test driving a Viper changed DRASTICALLY that day!
I’m an old drag racer, and I could easy get on that side of the argument, but honestly, I’m a huge IndyCar lover and would rather watch them on a road course any day rather than the 1000-foot (nee 1/4 mile) stuff.
Drag Racing changed significantly when it was more or less a “hobby” sport and NHRA motto was: “Dedicated to Speed and Safety” to “Championship Drag Racing”, of course when the cigarette money poured in that changed it to more “professional”. I remember the day at Lebanon Valley (upstate NY) and it was “Funny Cars, Funny Cars, Nitro Burning Funny Cars, Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY”, I witnessed the evolution of Shirley as she went from street car to Funny Cars (Bounty Huntress) to Top Fuel. Wild Times. Halter Tops, The smell of Nitro/Rubber/Grass in the air, and last but not least Fire Burnouts. Oh, those were the days, in more ways than one !!!
Those dragsters still shake the ground! I can’t believe people volunteer to drive those dragons.
Take a look at John Force’s annual income and then consider the use of the word “volunteer”!!! 😁
Larry, I really enjoy these podcast’s with the engineers and their inside stories on the development of these vehicles. Specific stories and trials and tribulations of the development process are especially interesting. your questions where great given the allotted time. You kept them on track and made the show flow. I hate it when guests get so far off track and I never hear the answer to the original question. Hope to hear more podcasts like this, good job.
Side note I worked for a tier 1 supplier that had a part in the first Viper GTS interior pieces. So the timing aspect of producing these cars struck a nerve.
I’m glad you liked it! I do try to keep the story moving and balance that with letting guest speak and potentially reveal something we didn’t know we wanted to know.
The original viper is the one to have. It was rude and crude. You had no roll up windows and hardly a roof. The pipes could still burn you. This is how it was meant to be not like the later refined models.
As for drag racing it is now 341 mph. That is even at 1000 ft.
1. Great to see a new column from Larry!
2. How there NOT be a guy named Dick Winkles involved in creating the original Viper?
3. I know about the Cizeta-Moroder from the Car & Driver car-a-day calendar I had back in high school. Also, the De Tomaso Mangusta, which, as I recall, was described as, “handling with all the grace and predictability of a wounded rhinoceros.”
Totaling the hottest new production car would have continued a C&D tradition established by David E Davis and his misadventures with a Porsche 928 😂
I hadn’t yet earned enough goodwill to total a car….
I saw Bob Tasca III fired up speech at the Gator Nationals. I agree with him. Indy racing is fine in it’s place, but it does not raise the adrenaline or your excitement level as much (or as fast) as two (sometimes four) 11,000 plus horsepower nitro cars hitting the loud pedal right in front of you.
Then in another view, unlimited airplanes have been racing at speeds even greater for a long time.
Shows the ignorance and self centered attitude of the Indy PR people.
And apparently the ignorance of the TV networks, since they shortsightedly gave a huge contract to IndyCar racing instead of the NHRA and unlimited airplane races, right? 😜