A tale of two Vipers

Mike Kuchavik - Owner for Havik Performance

Havik Performance began as a dream to offer a premier automotive business that would provide white-glove treatment paired with constant communication, and above standard industry expectations.

Contact: Mike Kuchavik at mike@havikperformance.com | 484-274-3037 | Visit Online!

              

• Origin of Havik Performance and what services they provide & maintaining the 2nd largest Viper collection in the US
• What Should I Buy (WSIB) Viper Questions and Mods + Setups for Autocrossing and Tracking a Viper
• Fact vs Fiction + Viper Myths!
• The Viper Truck
• Settle the debate: Viper vs Corvette
• Do we think, know, rumors… is there a next-gen Viper coming? FCA teased a V8 (ferrari) powered Viper for a while. With the EV-olution, what does that mean for the Viper? Hybrid?
• Viper Owners Association

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

For many of us, it all begins with a dream. Inspired by a poster on the wall, a small collection of Hot Wheels, a race you saw on tv. But for our guest, his dream began when he was 14 years old. His father purchased his dream car, a Dodge Viper. They started attending events together, learning more about the car, and meeting like-minded car enthusiasts.

Joining the Viper Club of America opened him up to understand what Viper owners expected from mechanics, how they wanted to modify their cars and what they wanted to be restored. And with that, a single dream realized Havoc performance was founded to offer a premier automotive business that would provide white glove treatment paired with constant communication and above standard industry expectations.

And to talk to us about all things. Vipers is Mike [00:01:00] kk, founder of Havoc Performance. And joining me and filling in for Brad is my guest host and newly minted Viper owner, the one, the only Mr. Andrew Bank. So welcome both of you, Mike, and Andrew to break fix. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Eric.

Unfortunately, finally caved on my first podcast ever. Uh, I don’t know how I feel about this. Dragged kicking and screaming. We’re doing it together. At least there’s a viper in the background. A hundred percent. And we will get into that in a little bit. So, Mike, we met recently at Watkins Glen. You were working on all things, uh, Jaguar, and we got to talking about a bunch of different stuff.

And then you mentioned something that really got my attention, which was the word viper. And like you, I’ve been in love with the Viper since the very first one came out. And let’s face it, it’s the hottest car from the nineties that was designed in the eighties. Right. Let’s talk about all things viper, but first let’s kick off with the [00:02:00] origin of havoc performance, what you provide and where this evolution is gone from you having this poster on your wall to now being a viper aficionado.

It really started, like we said, kind of in that intro about. When I was probably about 14 years old, my dad bought that Viper and it was just so much fun going out to the events and meeting all the people. They always joke around that like, you buy the car because it’s gorgeous, right? We love Vipers for what they are.

They’re beautiful cars, but you keep the car because of the people you meet through the clubs and the people are second to none on top of it. Growing up and getting to watch all that and meet all these great people and just watching some people’s experiences when you go to shops and stuff and their cars sit outside in the rain, like when they’re not getting worked on and all that jazz.

It’s like I found that unacceptable even when I was 18. If you’re gonna have a car like that, you expect to be treated like your baby. When I started to go, okay, well, like maybe I could start a business working on cars doing that sort of thing, it was one of those. Where I wanted to make sure that I built a [00:03:00] business that not only communicated, because that’s the biggest issue with MO shops is they don’t tell them or give them realistic deadlines or even if the deadline is pushed, they’re not updated.

So communication was the biggest part of it. And the other thing was taking care of their cars like, like a baby of mine. Cuz at the end of the day, our cars are like our children in a sense. I always wanted to make sure that they were clean battery tenders while I had them in my shop, and they would never sit outside in the weather.

If they had to go outside in the sun, they’d sit out in the sun for a little bit, but they’d never be out in the rain or anything like that. As years went on, we were watching all this stuff happen and people would take ’em to shops and some shops would end up wrecking vipers because nobody really knew what to do and some young guy would take it out.

And if you floor these things in third gear, if you’re at a high enough rpm, you can spend the tires if it’s. Not the right condition. So it can get dangerous pretty quick. It’s, it’s cuz it’s got all the toum, right? Yes. Peak torque is like 3000 RPMs for the record. Like, that’s awesome. You hit 3000 and you’re just about around peak torque.

That’s like a truck. Yeah. Well, we, we’ll get into that too. It’s, [00:04:00] it also sounds like one, it sounds like two five cylinder Audis running together. That’s all I know. That’s for damn sure. Just stand on each side of the car and you’ll figure that out. So it all started off with like, I saw a need. And as I started to do like car collection management, even when I was younger, like a friend of ours had a car collection, like 50 cars.

He’s got a little bit of everything and he watched me grow working outta my parents’ garage. I was doing oil changes for him when I was like 16, 17. All my friends knew and most of my high school knew that I had like a two car garage. My parents’ place. So they’d all ship their stuff up to me and we’d work on it and figure it out, and brakes slowly turned into, oh, well let’s rebuild a motor.

Let’s put transmissions in, let’s do performance shocks, and all that other fun stuff That continued to grow. And while the first guy that I was working with, he watched me grow and do all those things, gave me more and more responsibility. When I was a junior in college, I was actually going to Penn State at the time, studying business and marketing.

He met with the one Viper guy [00:05:00] we met through the Viper Club and he said, who works on all your cars? Well, Mike Junior did. So I started working for the Viper guy and 2015 he had six cars. As of today, we’re up to 52 in his collection. Holy cow. That’s something you mentioned to me at the track, you actually manage the second largest Viper collection in the us.

Correct. The second largest, the first largest is down in Texas. And last I heard they were at 94 Vipers, but they have like two. Is this one person owner or is this like a company that owns ’em all? That’s one person for both collections. Wow. Well, husband and wife for one month. I had two vipers in this scratch.

One didn’t run us in the, uh, cooling tank. Didn’t, uh, didn’t fill up, but you know. Yeah, that’s okay. For a brief one moment. Minor problems, somewhere on that list. They’re highly desirable, very bottom. And honestly, meeting those guys that have all those wipers, you would never guess that they’d have more than one talking to ’em.

And that’s the one of the best parts about the Viper Club. I don’t think we delved into what you offer at havoc [00:06:00] as service products, et cetera, as part of your business. So do you wanna expand upon that for our listeners? Just so like people know in general here, I handle anything and everything, right? So I’ve got a guy’s car who basically wants it essentially fully restored.

I’ve got body shops I work with, I’ve got guys who come in and do paint correction for us. We handle all the suspension components, motor builds, all that stuff. And we do, uh, some of the things in-house. But basically I wanted to design my business where you could drop your car off and when you picked it up, everything would be done.

If you wanted clear blood done, we would have it done for you and someone would come in and do it. If you wanted any of those services done, we could handle it. And it’s expanded into doing. Pre track inspection forms and going to track days with customers and making sure their cars are on tiptop shape.

So it’s really expanded into a bunch of different things. So it’s not like, oh yeah, I’m just gonna go get this engine work done and that’s that. It’s okay, I can go see him. We can set events up, we can get the whole car detailed and you know, so a bunch of different things. But I have all my [00:07:00] services too on the website if anyone wants to dive deeper into some of those things.

But if you need something done nine times outta 10, we can handle it and you won’t have to worry about the process and you work on more than just vipers. So that’s all also good. So, uh, yeah, we’ve done, we’ve done a little bit of everything. Let’s step back, let’s step back to 13 year old. Mike Kok and talk about the car that was hot on his list before the Viper came on the scene.

What was the poster on your wall when you were 13 years old? I had, I had two posters. It was Mustangs and Vipers. And at the time, all in my mind that I would be able to afford was going to be a Mustang. So I loved Mustangs. And then Vipers started to kind of creep up as more and more, and like one day my dad just walks out and we’re sitting in the garage and he goes, well, Mike, I did it.

There’s a Viper coming. And I was like, you’re shitting me. There’s no way in hell of Vipers coming, you’re pulling my leg. And sure as hell, a trailer pulled up and dropped a viper off in our driveway. And that was when the really, the, the real big dream of it [00:08:00] was really happening. Gen color. And here are the first one, should I make you guess?

It’s iconic Gen two Blue, white Stripe. Ah, man. You weren’t kidding. You have two vipers. Yeah, it was, it’s the, uh, the gen two iconic blue and white, because it copied after the Shelby Latona. That’s right. And we’ll, we’ll expand upon that in a little bit. Those are crazy valuable right now. I just saw an alert on that.

I get alerts every time the vis listened. Cause I’ve been looking for them my whole life. Yeah. Even though I just got one for the first time. I didn’t unsubscribe. Molly’s, I got an email five minutes ago. Hundred $19,000 gen I tell you right now. Ic cars.com. And of course I deleted it cause I was like little outta my price range a little bit.

I think it was in the thirties or less. It’s how much these things are going for now. And red yellows, they’re, they’re going for 50, sometimes 70, but, And that’s the gen twos. I paid less for the gen threes. Everyone fucking hates them for [00:09:00] some reason. Well, you have the coup. I know why. I know why. But yes, that’s the mm.

Here you go. 28,470 miles. He’s out of his mind. I just coordinated a deal a couple months ago for a all original blue and white 96 with like 5,000 miles and it was under 80. I just meant something. Look. Got it. There you go. Two horsepower. Makes a big difference. Yeah. Twin turbo. 2000 horsepower. Woo. Ok.

That car will kill you. So let’s get back to some more Viper origin stories. Right. As I was joking, the best car from the nineties that was designed in the eighties, and a lot of people don’t realize that much like AKA is credited for being, you know, the godfather of the Mustang, even though he didn’t pen a single line on that car, he was the guy that pushed the Mustang program forward, and it’s been an iconic vehicle ever since.

When he went to bat for Chrysler the second time, [00:10:00] not the first time, the second time to bring them back from the brink of complete destruction. There’s a little bit of mystique and mystery behind the story of why Lee pushed for this Skunk Works project. Known as the Viper Project. Got them a separate building, got car, his buddy Carol Shelby involved, things like that.

So the plans for the Viper were already started in the eighties, and then when I saw at debut in 89 and it rolled out on the stage, it was one of those moments where it was like, this is the next best thing since sliced bread. Let’s talk about those early vipers, what they really were, where the idea came from.

I mean, you’re an expert in these cars. Let’s kind of nerd out on the original 92, 93, 94 Gen one vipers. So one of the big pushers for the Viper was Bob Lutz. There’s a backstory to that that’s not really ever talked about to like, I’ll hear it at some of these like Viper team guys will tell us some stories.

Every so often you hear it pop up. But one of the reasons that they built. The Viper was Bob Lutz was, [00:11:00] would drive his Shelby Cobra to work and they would all razz him. He’d be like, all right, well like build me a car then that’s Dodge that can compete with my Cobra because right now what I’m gonna drive a minivan.

Dodge wasn’t doing too much in the performance world at the time. When it came to the original stuff, the main guys that were really pushing for it, they didn’t have a budget, they didn’t have any of that stuff. They had very little money to make these things happen. And let me tell you, they put a hell of a car together that can do many things that people don’t realize.

It’s just crazy to see what they made back in 89 compared to even what they have now. It’s one of those nice body styles that’s almost timeless cuz if you take the wheels off of an RT 10 target top the originals, and you put a set of gen five wheels on ’em. Yeah. If you get rid of those three spokes, you throw a new set of wheels on ’em.

I’ve had people come up to me and say, is this car from like the two thousands? It’s just crazy to see how these cars have been so timeless over the years. And there’s a few other cars that are just like that. And I’ll name drop them. The Gen three RX seven, the fourth gen [00:12:00] Supra, the Audi R eight. Yeah. It doesn’t matter what year it is.

And you look at it today, you’re like, it still looks new. It still looks modern. And I think the Vipers is one of those designs. Granted, we, we gotta discount the blocky Mercedes period there for a moment, but those early vipers. I mean, they are, to your point, very reminiscent of the Shelby Cobra. And obviously having Carol Shelby involved in helping to design the original Viper is really important to that part of the story.

It comes at a terrible time for Chrysler, though. I mean, there’s in dire straits, you know, on the brink of financial ruin, and here they are building, quote unquote a supercar. How does that all work? And honestly, that’s probably why the budgets were so tough and all the like crazy things that I know we’ll get into later about some of these other stories.

I get to tell you that they made happen and did the things that they did because the money wasn’t there. But somehow they got through this process of things to make these cars and give them all this publicity, [00:13:00] which I really think helped them in the long run. They didn’t, I don’t think they made a ton of money on the cars.

One of the reasons why they probably stopped, but in the beginning, As far as the performance world, as stuff goes you, like you said, they were designed in the eighties and they lasted through the nineties and did a hell of a job doing it. And there was a gap there too between the initial prototype rollout in 89.

Mm-hmm. So when the first one went on sale, the very first vipers in 92, that’s a three year gap. So they spent that time refining it. The first vipers that launched don’t exactly look like the prototype either. You know, they’ve been modified, they were slightly bigger, you know, things like that. They had to add some creature comforts, although there were very few, which we’ll talk about in those early cars.

A doorknob. That stuff is always, you totally didn’t need for that first one. Did the Cobra have any of that stuff? No. So the Viper didn’t have it either, right? I didn’t need it. No ac, none of that. Coming from the Cobra, we go to the Viper to continue with that lineage. It all, it all kind of gels together.[00:14:00]

It’s obvious to us as Petrolheads, but it might not be obvious to somebody else. Like, I don’t, I don’t get the history. So we’re gonna fill in those gaps. And I remember one story that was kind of fun about the Skunk Works project. As they were putting it together, Coco said, Hey, go take this building over there.

Go work on it on your own. And I read this in his memoirs and he was saying about how guys were like basically taking the, the corporate minivans and running over to other parts of the campus and basically quote unquote, borrowing, we’ll call it equipment. Computers, whatever they could get in the back of a miniman and bringing it over to the skunkworks building.

Roy Shoberg, he was the one overseeing the project at the time, right? He was the one that was building a team. So he was the one who put like Dick Winkles together, Tom Gail together, all those guys that made this viper happen. In the beginning, the team of guys were like, Roy, you need to get a minivan as your company car.

And he goes, why the hell would I want a minivan is my company car? And he goes, we’re gonna take the seats out of it. And because your corporate, your car isn’t inspected when it leaves the plants. So we’re gonna drive to the other plants [00:15:00] that we know aren’t using computers and aren’t using all the drafting stuff and we’re just gonna take it.

We’re gonna put it in the van and we’re gonna move it to where we need it to so we can use that stuff to develop this car because we don’t have any money to do so. So that story is actually true and it’s rather hilarious that that actually happened because I mean, it nowadays, there’s so much paperwork involved to do anything.

Back then they were like, ah, fuck it. Like let’s just do this. It’s ingenious. And you know, it speaks to something that Lee talked about in his first autobiography when he went to Chrysler the first time, is that even though he was a Ford man and he had been at Ford forever, he said that there was always something about the Chrysler engineers that they were always thinking outside of the box.

They were really a cut above. They just were performing surgery, as I like to call it, with a spoon and a screwdriver, right? They just never had the tools to bring these dreams to reality. And so they made a lot of, let’s face it, a bunch of turds, right? Yep. But, and there was some cool stuff in the seventies and the muscle car era, but there was a this, this middle-aged period of Christ where you’re like, I don’t want to [00:16:00] talk about any of this stuff.

And then along comes the Viper and you’re like, whoa. And we can nerd out upon that. But there’s some other, I think, myth busting we need to do along the way, and that’s. The one you hear all the time. Well that’s just a Lamborghini V 10. They didn’t even develop that engine themselves or the other side, it’s just a truck motor and it came out of an agricultural piece of equipment, blah, blah blah.

So what’s the truth? The truth is, at the time they did not have the molds or the technology to really make an all aluminum V 10. Dick Winkles at the time did go over to Lamborghini cuz he was one of the head designers of the Viper motor and they worked with Lamborghini to figure out how to make the motor run cool enough, work well enough being all aluminum because Lamborghinis was making aluminum blocks at the time.

So it’s not truly a Lamborghini motor because they took the basic design, kind of like from the trucks or even from the V8 S, just added two cylinders cuz that’s all, it’s really two inline fives essentially. So they used that platform, took some information from [00:17:00] Lamborghini and then made it happen in the process.

So on one end it’s not on the other, it’s kind of dead center as far as how that goes. Interesting. So it’s a little bit of both. So everybody’s a little bit of both. So everybody’s kind of right that applying to both the first gen and the third gen ones, and I know they changed a lot about the engine between the, uh, the, what was it, 2003 remake when they went from gen two to gen three.

Gen two and Gen three motors are different. Ironically enough, you can put gen three heads on top of a gen two motor. The head gasket are. The same. And so there are a lot of similarities. The design is kind of the same at the end of the day. They are all kind of the same motor. They just made improvements through the year.

So there’s definitely like a redesign cuz they went up to the eight three in the gen threes versus uh, like the eight liters. So they 8, 8, 4. Yeah. The eight three is the gen three, the eight four is the gen four. So oh, eight to 10 is gen, is the eight four. That’s just, I know it’s written on my little intake thing.

That’s 5 0 5 8 0.4. He’s uh, he’s Facting. Oh yeah. I’m fact checking myself. How much [00:18:00] did they change it to in 2008 when they made the gen four and they bumped it up a hundred horsepower. They went from five 10 to 6 0 5, 600 flat. And they literally, you know, they didn’t change anything about the frame of the car.

They just changed the intake and the manifold. My understanding and. They went, well these aren’t selling. We gotta do something and bump it up a hundred horsepower and make a cooler, you know, cooler hood with the three open vents instead of like the flattened, the displacement only went from an 8.3 to an 8.4 from the gen three s, which was oh three to 2006, and then the gen four s came out in oh eight and the oh eight to 10 was an 8.4 liter size block.

But what they changed was they added like a variable timing essentially with the cam. By doing that, it was creating more power. BTech. Yo, you got BTech. Yeah, it’s, I mean, Kindos. Basically it’s like a variable intake sort of situation where you were able, they were able to get some more power out of it.

Yeah. Volkswagen introduced something like that in 2003 on the R 32 s as well where they can change the length of the runners and [00:19:00] all this kind of crazy stuff using vacuum and, and OIDs and all sorts of stuff that was prone to break, you know, so it’s awesome. Yeah. So speaking of prone to break, let’s talk a little bit about the early cars, cuz it’s kinda still staggering.

To put it in perspective, you’re talking a quasi 500 horsepower car in the early nineties. I mean even the F 40 s and other iconic super cars of that time. Weren’t making that kind of power. Like this was the muscle car of the modern times. Right. And if you think about it, what things did the Vipers not come with?

Let’s start with that and then how have they evolved and what is still on? Let’s say, let’s, let’s say, what’s still on a current viper? Last Gen Viper. That’s a carryover from the originals. Did anything make it all the way through? Every generation. They all stayed manual. You could never get ’em in an automatic.

That’s hugely awesome. Yeah. So that was one of the big things that, uh, they wanted was it had to stay raw, right? So they always kept them V 10 s and they always kept them [00:20:00] annual transmissions. From 92 to 2010, there was no traction control, no stability control. It was only until the government mandated traction control, stability, control in the cars, which was what happened with the Gen five.

So like the government stepped in and made that have to happen. Or like in 2001, They brought in ab b s, so like in 2001 and newer Vipers will have, and we’ll have ab b s modules in ’em. Besides that, everything from 92 up to 2000, we’ll have, uh, sorry, 2000. They brought the AB BS in 92 to 99. There’s no a b, s.

And which years did they actually have door handles and door locks and windows as, as Andrew alluded to? Um, so I mean, once they brought out the GTS model, so the coop, they had door handles on the coops. So in 96 they started to add door handles to the coop, well, to the RT 10. So like they have this weird 96 and a half RT 10 that, like some of them didn’t necessarily have exterior door handles.

They were just still, you reached inside and grabbed the interior handle. So it’s like the half [00:21:00] year RT 10 stuff. That didn’t have roll up windows. It didn’t ha necessarily have handles yet. So it’s like that 97 era that they started to incorporate windows into the rt tens that weren’t like in the trunk that you had to put in.

You still the tops in the trunk that would go on. But, and that was another crazy story that like, like a hideous little top hat. I hate the look. It just looked like a, like an old man with like a fake hairpiece on and you could see it doesn’t belong. Like he didn’t glue it on all the way. It’s as sea.

It’s the one thing that always bugged me about the RC 10. If you do, if you do 55 miles an hour, you won’t get wet. Just so you know. Um, but that aerodynamic about that. Yeah. Science believe it was another one of those situations where somebody in corporate was driving an RT 10 and started to rain in Detroit.

So they were like, these things need roofs. We need to make sure that these have roofs because I don’t wanna get stuck in the rain if I’m out. So that’s why they ended up adding them into the fold up into the trunk, whereas, To my knowledge, cobras didn’t [00:22:00] have any roof system. It was, you better drive it while it’s sunny or you’re getting wet, or they had those sort of tunnel covers, like the old lotuses would have that, you know?

Okay. They would use those button rivets. Yeah. To like, you know, clip it on. It’s like a leather cover. That was typical of British cars. Cuz you gotta remember the Cobra itself started out as an AC going way back before Shelby got his hands on it. So there was a British roadster before they, they put the Ford.

Heart in it and the four drive train and all that kind of stuff. The Cobra kept that. And there’s actually a really great video, which we’ll post in the show notes that Jay Leno did during Covid of his 93, I believe it is r T 10, which he, he gets into this whole debate about whether he’s the first one to own a black viper because they came red up until that point.

And there’s another gentleman that contests that he got his first and all this back and forth, but what he ends up doing on the episode is going through all the amenities, or I guess lack thereof on those early vipers. And he lays out in the gro his [00:23:00] garage floor at one point. He’s like, this is all the stuff I gotta do.

To make sure I don’t get wet. Right. And, and, and he lays it all. It’s really cool. And you’re, and I’m looking at it going, this is like all old British Roadster stuff. So it’s kind of neat that they kept that and eventually, obviously that went away. But you said the manual transmissions. And the question I got from somebody recently was what?

Manual is in the Viper, in the Gen one s and two s? It’s a T 56. Sorry. In the Gen three s it’s also a T 56 and then the Gen four s and Gen five s use the T 60 60 s. Okay. So no ZF transmissions, not the Mercedes based or anything like that. So, Okay. They’re all trem allic. Nice. A lot of guys will find Viper Transits and use ’em for like V8 Chevys and other sites of conversions.

Mm-hmm. Or converting the, the truck, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. In terms of chassis, obviously that evolved, especially during the Mercedes period. They got really kind of big, you know, things like that. But is there anything that is a, a heritage piece that has made it from the first Gen Viper all the way through the last ACRs in 20 16, 20 17?[00:24:00]

So, like I said, like the big thing about all of that was they wanted to keep the car as raw as possible. Some people wanted to put automatics in them from corporate and all that other funds, jazz. And they basically said, no, they have to stay manual. They have to stay the V 10, they have to stay rear wheel drive, we, and we want to keep it as race car esque as possible.

Right. So they wanted to keep the nannies off the cars and make these things be able to be track monsters at the end of the day. And then if you broke down, you’d be easy enough to fix at the track if you needed to. The thing that really held true, the car the whole time was. The fact that they only came in manual transmissions through the entire generations.

When they switched from the Gen four to Gen five, they went, well, basically a three year dash 13 where s RT took over and they were no longer Dodge. They were s rt. At that point they scrapped down mean that it didn’t look anything like the resume. They modeled the body off of the original gen two GTS coop.

They did the swooping, you know, hood again, that was the exotic, sideways opening one rather than this [00:25:00] garbage one that opens up, you know, for boring regular hood. I dunno, I love those ones. I got to do a ride along with Eugene at one of our events at New Jersey Motorsport Park. Unfortunately we had a little incident where the, uh, oil cap was not screwed on all the way after he filled it back up and it blew smoke and oil all over the engine.

I, uh, legitimately thought I was dying cause he acr and he was going faster than I’d ever been on the track. All of a sudden we’re seeing black smoke everywhere and I’m just in the passenger seat, like, cool, this guy’s about to kill me. That’s cool. And I, I played a little bit too much GTA five gta and I, I was like, I know what black smoke coming outta the engine means.

That means the car’s about to explode in about, you know, five seconds we pull over. It’s just oil and everything, but. Selves was the incredibly memorable ride along. And I’m holding a spot, the, the poster you have right behind you, that one with white stripes, that’ll be the next one. Might take me a little longer, but long addition, I’ll be happy with this one.

But they’re gorgeous. But like you were saying too, they wanted to try to keep the clamshell hoods, especially as the design changed through the years and that was again, [00:26:00] something else that they kind of tried to keep. But at the end of the day, even if you look at all vipers, the front ends in my opinion, all have that kind of same mean design.

The headlights are a little bit different. I mean, the didn’t, the gen fives and the gen twos are like, to me, the Gen five is the new version of the gen two and which is one of the things that I really like about those designs. So as far as things that made it through all the years, I think it’s really just like trans motor.

And they kept, they tried their hardest to keep the rawness of those cars. If the Gen five is the new gen two, does that mean that the gen three is the new copperhead? So let’s talk about the copperhead for a second, shall we? That was a slight gem that like the Mamba edition. So there’s a million editions, you mean?

But all these special ones that I’m like, what’s special about the copperhead? That’s what I wanted to ask. Let’s let Mike Phyllis in on what the copperhead is. So. The copperhead was either a Cooper or convertible, and depending on the year, it would have a dash plaque, it would have orange [00:27:00] stitching, it would have that copper color, and it would have those five spoke polished chrome looking wheels.

Outside of that, it was like a badge that they put on it, just like a lot of the other cars they did. That’s true of the Viper. I’m gonna stretch. Oh, okay. Your imagination, right. Where are we at? We are at the concept. Dodge Copperhead, if you recall, which was developed in 1997 as a one-off prototype, as a variant of the Viper.

It has a very squareish front end. Looks like something out of Batman. The animated series, if you search, I’ve actually seen it. There is apparently like one, and that’s why I joke that the gen three is the new version of the Copperhead because it has kind of similar body lines, right? If you think about it.

Yeah. I mean the tail lights look exactly hideous. There’s also this front end looks like a, uh, not PC cruiser, a uh, Plymouth Prowler only. It has, it’s not open wheel. It’s got fenders. Exactly. And [00:28:00] there’s a third little car, and I mean little that you add to this equation known as the Demonn, which we talked about in an earlier episode, which was designed as a Miata killer and also has related articles.

And also has very viper like lines to it as well. So that’s kind of another kind of sub variant of the Viper family there. If we’re playing a little bit of Viper Family Tree Viper trivia. Speaking of that, Mike, what are some other great little interesting tidbits of information or stories or anecdotes about the Viper and its lineage that you’d like to share?

So one of my favorites. It has to be the turn signals on the Gen one s and twos, because we’ve always talked about how they didn’t have enough money to be really building these cars, right? They had to cut corners as best they could to make things cheap and make this car happen because they all wanted it to.

They all had the passion to, but how are they gonna do it when they’re originally needing to make the tooling for turn signals for these bumpers? Basically, Chrysler came back and said, well, it’s gonna be [00:29:00] 250,000 aside to make the tooling, and then you can make all the lights you need. Well, Roy said, that’s not happening.

Go down to the trailer store and find a good set of lights that will fit and look good in this bumper. So they went down, they found a set of trailer lights and the turn signal lights in the front bumpers of the gen one and twos are actually trailer lights. So they took the trailer lights, used the tooling from them.

And saved a crap ton of money so they could put it elsewhere. Plastic parts bin. Oh yes, very much. And card to excess. I mean even my key in the key fob are the exact same ones out of a Dodge Caravan from that year. The vent identical, I mean I looked it up, I’m sure you have seen how, how much these things are cheap plastic.

So that first viper I got, everything was broken. Like every interior piece of crack was so brittle. Yep. And trucks did not hold up the 15 years of even, I dunno if it was garage kept or not, but the interior is not what you buy this car for. It’s definitely minimalist. That correct at that. But it sounds fantastic, even if it does [00:30:00] sound a little bit like the old Cub cadet tractor I used to blow my parents lawn with.

It still sounds pretty good. I like I, the first time driving, I’m in six gear and I, I rev it. I just hear and I’m just like, ok, that’s not what I was expecting this to sound like. I’m, I can’t say I’m disappointed or anything, but, well, hey, six gear. You’re probably at like a thousand RPMs, so 90 miles an hour, 1,750 RPMs.

It’s wild. I’m like, this thing’s got so much to give, I mean, a ton of displacement. And, uh, you know, first order of business. I gotta look for an exhaust. Actually, Mike, you gotta gimme suggestions. Even if it’s later on. I gotta know Corsa Barilla. Like, what, what do I get for this cause about Barilla? That’s a brand.

I, I, I swear I saw it on a form that’s available. Version. I was surprised, Piper. Alright. No, I was surprised when we had it up on the lift that the pipes, they went down. Crossed around [00:31:00] the back and came out. So the, the left exit pipe coming outta the side here is actually coming from the right side of the engine, and it crosses behind the passenger foot, like behind your seats, which to me seems like a ton of excess weight.

A ton of excess. You know, it, it just seems like they could have straight piped, like coming right outta the side. I’m sure there’s EPA regulations and stuff, but yeah, I, I don’t know if you have any insight on that that came down to sound. I’m sure if you’ve ever driven that thing in the summer, it gets very hot in that cabin because you’re completely surrounded by exhaust.

I definitely have a burn on my legs. Prove that. Oh, you’ve got the snake bite. Oh, is that what that. You’ve been bit by the snake because you’ve reached the leg out and you burn it on the side. Si. Oh man. So, so this is actually really good tips for understanding how the vipers built what you should look for if you’re buying one.

Obviously Andrew just went through this experience and I think he l it was a trial by fire in some cases. So let’s talk about if you’re shopping for a viper. Mike, what [00:32:00] should you be looking out for? What are some telltale signs? What are things that are known to go wrong? You know, some things that people might be afraid, oh, it’s got that issue.

I don’t want to deal with that. Or it’s something super simple that’s actually really cheap to fix. So let’s kind of go with some of these buyer’s tips. On a viper, depending on the generation, is gonna really depend on what the uh, o’s or the things that were problematic from 22 to even up to 2017. The oil cooler lines almost always leak.

It’s just a matter of time. They don’t leak bad. I haven’t seen any stock ones like blow out yet, but it is something that you eventually need to address. Again, nothing that’s too big of a deal. You should worry about oil levels. If you go look at a guy’s car and the oil is below the low, Point, maybe you should sear away from it.

Again, it can be fixed. Anything on these cars can be fixed. That’s the nice part about being built out of parts bins. You just have to figure out where the parts actually came from and cross it to something else. Like on the Gen four s, the rear lift hatch, right? There’s a button in the trunk to open the rear trunk.

The viper part is like $200. You get the same exact [00:33:00] button out of a Chrysler minivan for $15 on Amazon. There’s a lot of mini numbers parts on this sports car. What? What’s going on here? You’d be surprised. So it really just comes down to the generation, right? Like the Gen one s, they were so rudimentary, there wasn’t any creature comfort.

So like the dashboard gets super sticky because they just wear out unfortunately, and they get scratched up and just not look great. So that could be something that would steer somebody away, but again, they can be refinished and redone. But the gen ones were. Honestly, really solid as far as that stuff goes.

The suspension was just a little bit more rudimentary, so it was easier to essentially kill yourself in because if you didn’t know what you were doing, you could hurt yourself because again, no nannies, none of that. So the gen ones were pretty solid. Unfortunately, though, ethanol and the fuel nowadays, Eats away at the fuel hoses inside the fuel pump, which then eventually causes them to split on the gin one s, not the end of the world.

Fuel pump assembly comes out, you rebuild it and everything’s okay. Again. So the gin one s, the big thing to look out for is when you turn that key and you crank it over, if it takes a little [00:34:00] bit to crank over, it probably needs a fuel pressure regulator because it’s not holding the fuel up into the rails and your fuel system probably needs to be rebuilt.

That’s the biggest issue that I’ve seen so far in the Gen one s, outside of like is that head gaskets will eventually go, but from a 92, are you including like the ones up to like the 2002? The Gen one and two to me are so similar that it’s hard for me to differentiate. I When does it become gentech? Is it 1997 that it became Gen two or next 96?

When the GTS came out in 96, it became the second generation. Okay. Depending on where they were in that year is gonna depend on the kind of fuel pressure regulators that were in the fuel buckets. But it’s mostly the gen ones that I’ve seen all the issues with, at least thus four. Is that because there was a changeover in the minivans as well?

They went from the caravan to the grand Caravan or something? Is that why it changed? Um, so the regulators are actually the same as ones that are out of like a Dodge Durango and like the fuel floats for the gen ones are the same out of the Dodge Grand Caravan. [00:35:00] I can buy the whole assembly for 80 bucks, but if I find a fuel float out of a viper, I’m gonna spend like 300.

Oh geez. As far as the Gen two stuff goes, oil cooler lines were solid. The big things to look out for now that they’re old are the cooling system hoses, just cuz rubber wears out. The power steering pump pullies are huge because they were plastic. It’s plastic onto mounted onto a metal shaft. It separates, it splits, it cracks, and then now you lose your serpentine belt, your cooling system, and you’re stuck on the side of the road and you’re pissed off all because the $10 part broke.

But overall, like the J two s were pretty solid outside of like a couple, you know, maintenance things. They didn’t really have too many problems. Bottom ends were pretty solid. They eventually switched over in 2000 to like the cream puff motors where they switched out the cams and they got rid of the forged pistons.

When they switched over to that stuff, they didn’t have any, at least from what I’ve seen so far, they haven’t had any like bearing issues or anything like that. They just changed the cam up a little bit to meet some EPA stuff. But overall, the gen two s are really solid, so that’s kind of [00:36:00] nice. The one thing to look out for too, as far as paint goes on the gen two s is the side cells are aluminum, right?

So they corrode from the backside, then bubble the paint, and then like rust through, people think it’s all from heat. Well, it’s not actually all from heat, it’s from corrosion on the backside. But everyone says online, oh, it’s because the cats are so hot it plays a part, but it’s not necessarily true. The early cars, were they ahead of their time?

They were at least O B D one, correct? Or not? Early model Gen one stuff is O B D one. As soon as they switched over to 96 when everything had to go O B D two, it’s OB D two. Okay. I mean it’s rudimentary OB D two, but it’s OB D two. You can hook a scanner up and read some things and on the later cars, the three fours and fives, some buying tips.

If you’re looking at this, especially the threes now that you know, Andrew’s already gotten his, it was, it was a whole thing. I’ve been looking forward these my whole life. I had a Lotus tracked it for a year and then you know, covid happened and used cars start skyrocketing and the first thing to go up were those specialty cars and I looked at the price releases go up [00:37:00] 40, 50% and I took it.

I got rid of that and that’s when I knew, I was like, I had to have a viper and the first Viper I looked at in person was a 2002. So Jen. To final edition, coop Red with White Stripes. It was the car that I had a poster as a kid. Unfortunately it did not work out. The guy had three in his garage. Young guy.

He had bought three. He knew the market was going up. He had a blue with white stripes. He had a red RT 10 gen one, and he had this gen two final audition they bought from a guy. I was so upset because he had the title in someone else’s name and I went to get financing and they wouldn’t follow through on it.

You were mentioning the fuel pump getting messed up and even the one that he had on battery maintainer, it wouldn’t start. It just like turned over 10, 15 seconds, which is excruciatingly a long amount of time. Yeah. And it finally ran, but I ended up with this gen cars and bids com. Okay. After buying another gen three from a Florida dealer who told me.

This car is in good condition. I, I talked to him on the phone. I see it on Autotrader and it gets here. And then, you know, we were kind of texting [00:38:00] about this one the other day cause I gotta, you know, I gotta do this front control arms. But this other one that I got, oh my God, it was trash coolant tank is cracked, so it wasn’t even holding coolant.

So it shows up with a check engine light on and I think, oh, you know, it just needs cooling. Fill the cooling up. It drains out within like a hundred miles of driving. So I get it to my buddy’s shop, put it on a list. And he’s got no oh two sensors, a straight pipe, exhausted shooting flames out the side, which I must admit was the coolest fucking thing ever.

And it sounded great. But downstream, oh, two sensors removed that, you know, they put resistors in, both of them burned out, or the right side of them burned out. He goes underneath and he’s starting to rub everything and there’s oil everywhere. We’re like, what is this? Well, it was either power steering, fluid oil, or coolant, couldn’t discern what it was.

There was three types of fluid in there, uh, within five days of owning it, six days. The clutch just went to the floor one morning when I went to start it and I couldn’t get it in or outta gear, turn on a first game chunk. But yeah, I got rid of it. The guy took it back, he paid me for it and uh, I ended up winning this one on, you know, the officer said a couple days later.[00:39:00]

I love it. I think a part of me will always be disappointed. I didn’t get that Gen two gen twos arguably. I know Eric had, he had a lot to say to me when I was, when I told him I got the gen three. Cause you know, it’s uh, it’s mercedes’s crap. It’s parts spin car. And uh, you know, I I love the gen twos as much as anyone else.

I’m still happy with it, but you know, we’re gonna be talking in the future cause it’s gonna be sure many things that need to be replaced. Saying is he wants, he’s gonna try to make your gin three. Cool. It’s, it’s a hard task, but he’s gonna try to make it cool. Alright, turbo supercharger. What? Uh, let, let’s start smaller first.

Like you can make a good amount of power with like heads and cam out of those cars, you know, I mean, what you started out with 5 0 5. Our last head and cam package put down six 14 to the wheels, which is technically a little bit more power than a gen five. Okay. So it’s just, it’s basically making the changes that they did for the gen four in 2008.

And what is it? Bigger intake or you say just the Cams Bolton still traveler. Basically that’s all. It’s ok. I can teach you. [00:40:00] I’m fine with that. So basically with like the heads and cam stuff, we port and polish the heads. We go larger intake and exhaust valves. So it flows a lot more air. It goes headers, exhaust.

We keep the stock intakes. Stock injectors would you do upgrade the fuel pump. But outside of that you add those couple different things and you get to put down a bunch more power. That is the recipe you tune. Course you got my recently and bought from guy who had a. No tune. And I took that shit to New Jersey Motor Park codes on every session for fuel pump issues, this and that, and I, I finally take Guy, guy stuff once.

And I got to find that on the track. So now I’m non savvy. Now I know to get stuff tune, but I’m happy you’re learning some things through time here. As we move into those gen three s, obviously you see more and more Bosch like stuff because of this [00:41:00] portion of Chrysler’s history. Daimler, you know, Mercedes had taken over the company, so you probably see a lot more German type of parts in there.

And then obviously later they sold to fiat when the Gem fours and fives came out. So then it was FCA at that point and, and that’s when the redesigns come in. And I will say across the board at Chrysler, I thought Fiat did an excellent job redesigning cars inside and out. But what we haven’t talked about yet is what to look out for if you were buying one of these later edition Vipers, a Gen four, gen five.

So what’s on the buyer’s guide there? The typical thing to really look for on the Gen four is the oil cooler lines like we’ve discussed, the Gen four s were pretty solid, and they do have issues with window regulators. The window regulators through most of the generations were kind of crappy. The glue they used weren’t, wasn’t good.

All that fun stuff. So the Gen four s were fortunate enough to get the swinging pickup upgrade from the gen, so it didn’t have as many oiling issues when you were on the track. So overall, the Gen four s were pretty solid as far as that stuff goes. Until you, there were certain modifications that people [00:42:00] could do that.

Would screw things up. But as far as stock goes, they were overall really solid as long as you weren’t gonna be having misfires or anything like that, which, you know, you should change your spark plug wires out and all that stuff. We as car guys know that that’s normal maintenance overall, the gen fours were really solid.

They didn’t really seem to have any bearing issues, of course, unless you were really hard tracking ’em or running ’em low on oil. The just the big thing were really the oil cooler lines on those and the window regulators were super common. And of course the typical interior issues that all of them had, but overall they didn’t.

One of the better ones. Yeah, the dash that cracks and pieces that fade and peel and then you need that stuff restored. But the gen fours are overall pretty solid. The subwoofer, oh my god, I, you don’t love that. I thought it was blown. The soy

foam in it rattled and go fix it. You gotta remove the whole piece that goes underneath the door, still up [00:43:00] behind the car and covers the box to get in there and stop the rattling. And it involves taking the seats out and this and that. And I’m like, if you have any suggestions on how to make that sub Wolff for enclosure, stop sounding like literally a busted old, you know, Honda Civic tell you Exactly.

Love it to fix it. All right. Sounds like it’s probably boring. We could talk about that offline, but you know, I’ll greatly appreciate it. Cause man, I’m trying to listen to my bass, get amped up for the gym driving somewhere and I’m like, alright, base down to negative eight. And it’s still rattling. I mean, who needs stereo?

Who needs a stereo? When you have a, when I can listen to that truck engine that, that, that beautiful tractor. It’s a moan thing. It’s more like, but that’s okay. So the gen fives are still pretty new, so I’m assuming they haven’t lived long enough lives yet to really come up with some major problems. You know, if you were buying one, right?

So there was some major problems. Um, there was, believe it or not, it was common but not that common sort of problem, right? Everyone online, if [00:44:00] they had a bearing problem, everyone had a bearing problem. A lot of guys were having bearing issues. But the other issue of that is, is if you don’t monitor your motor oil, you probably are gonna have motor issues or bearing issue.

If you let the car sit for three or four months and all the oil drains back into the pan and you start that thing up, it’s a dry start and it’s gonna wear the bearings out more and more over time. On top of it, they switched over to a zero 20 or a zero 40 for the stock motor oil, which I think was like a marketing aspect cuz they were gonna start using pens, oil.

But when you talk to the engineers and everything else, All the cars that leave my shop get at least five 40 in them, if not 1540 or 1550 depending on what the application is because that zero eight oil is just too thin and it can cause some of that premature bearing wear over time. And the bearing wear was pretty big on those.

In 17, there was some like hush hush things that were kind of happening with some of the diffs where the wrong fluid may have been used and it was blowing diffs up. Of course it was all covered under warranty, but if, you know, [00:45:00] if you buy a 17 and there’s 200 miles on it, change your diff fluid because you don’t wanna blow a diff up just in case.

That’s kind of a bad thing. A little bit more common issues that guys had, whereas the bearing issues on the gen fives and like the diff issues. But outside of that, there hasn’t, at least from what I’ve seen thus far from all the collection management I’ve been doing, I haven’t seen too many issues with the Gen fives outside of the typical, Hey, your oil cooler lines leaking, or We’re just gonna change all the fluids out and all that jazz.

So I know this sounds like a redundant question, but it’s a professional opinion question here. Yeah. So to kind of wrap up this thought, because there are five different generations of the Viper and they all have their idiosyncrasies and everything else, but you, Mike, if you were gonna recommend somebody by a viper today, they’re first viper, Andrew doesn’t get a vote on this one, the best year, maybe the worst year, Targa or Coop, what would you pick?

What would you tell somebody? I would pick a early model gen two. So the early models were 96 to 99. That [00:46:00] would be what I get into for a couple different reasons. One, it was the iconic wiper, so even if it’s not blue and white, it still was like the iconic wiper two. I’m six four and I don’t fit in these cars as it is.

The Gen two s I fit in the most I can actually see out of the windshield, even though my eyes are up towards the top. When I drive to later generations, I have to duck my head down so I can see through the windshield and see the lights. So for me, the size of the car matters and the gen two to me personally has the most amount of space.

And in my personal opinion, I like the gen two s the most because they also seem to be the most reliable. As long as you maintain them well enough. And if you ever want to go add more power, the gen two, gen three s are really easy to add power without going turboed and everything else. And it gives you still that raw feeling.

I’ll never forget when I first started driving, when he would let me take his Mustang out, my dad always told me this traction control button, if you turn it off and it doesn’t kill you, I will. So like as a kid, when I was really young, I asked, what’s that button to dad? He turns it [00:47:00] off and we go through an intersection freaking sideways, and he goes, that’s what that does and you will never turn that button off.

And ironically enough, now I get to test drive vipers that are. 600 to 1200 horsepower that don’t have any traction control. So I need to know what I’m doing. Let’s do this cuz Andrew has evolved a lot. As of many of our members in our audience will attest. You know, he’s grown a lot as his DIY shade tree mechanic.

You know, he moved from, let’s say, production cars. I mean, he had the, he had the lotus, which is considerably an exotic, but hey, it’s a Celica engine. So we can, we can live with that cheaper. You move into this supercar, you move into this supercar territory, things change immediately. There’s tax, like we joke about the, you know, the M tax and the, you know, the Porsche tax and things like that.

So you have the cost, like you said, of viper parts, but then there’s also, you have to have a specialty, quote unquote mechanic work on these vehicles, or is that. A myth, are these [00:48:00] cars actually workable by the average, let’s say guy that knows how to turn a wrencher two. Like how hard is it to work on a viper?

I know I sent Mike this picture, but that’s exactly what I was trying to talk to him about. Cause I’m looking at stuff, I’m like, cool, it needs new, um, sway bar InLinks, it needs, uh, new control arm. And I got another shot to quote me, 800 per control arm. He didn’t even quote me on the sway bar. InLinks and I.

Looked them up two 50 a piece. And that is a what? $50 part? My buddy’s got an s rs, my buddy Andrew, who’s at the track, he just had to replace his, and I’m like, he, he was doing his, uh, coil overs and he broke his sway bar in like, he got it overnighted for like, I think he said 30 bucks, 40 bucks, and you could get the end length I’m looking at for like 30 bucks.

Okay. Once again, we’re gonna be having another conversation soon. So I really got to, well, we’re glad we got to, uh, get this rapport before I started asking you to work on my car. Well, we’re also gonna check with our friends over at Powerflex to see if they make anything for the Viper too. That’s a [00:49:00] one and done solution.

When we go down that road, I mean, you absolutely know within the next year, I’m coming to you to do the headers. Everything, dude. Yeah. 600 horsepower. That’s good. 500. Nah, that’s not enough. That’s, that’s not enough. We gotta make as much as, you know, what I’ll do is I’ll get that Gen four hood with the bigger and after, after I get the 600 horsepower, then I’m not opposed.

Then I can be like, well, it. It has the hood, but it also has the power. A little bit more there. There you go. You got me. You got me excited about about that. So for those of us that aren’t ballers, like Andrew, going back to my original question, if I don’t have kids, but if I wanted to turn wrenches on.

Kidding, kidding, kidding. If I wanted to turn wrenches on my own, Viper, how difficult would it be? My personal side says, oh yeah, they’re really hard because that’s what I do for a living. But honestly, at the end of the day, they’re very easy cars, right? Like to put it in perspective, If you had to change an oil pan gasket at the track, you could easily do it.

There are simple [00:50:00] push rod motors and a lot of guys know through the years how push rod motors work. The timing is literally the crank shaft and the cam shaft. You line those two up, it’s two pieces. It’s not four or five pieces that you have to line up with belts and crap. So there are pretty easy to work on and most things you don’t really need a lift for.

Again, they make it easier. The shocks come out pretty easy. The shocks are two bolts unless you’re going to like remote reservoirs and everything else. Overall, they’re pretty easy to work on. There’s definitely some nuances that like it would help if you would ask some questions. So if there are people that do work on their own car and they want to call me and I can try to direct them in the right direction, I’m more than happy to do that.

If you wanna work on your own stuff, I actually kind of encourage it because again, it keeps the camaraderie together and people really, some guys really like to wrench on their own cars, and it’s really not that hard at the end of the day. I also joke around and say it’s like big boy Legos, like. If you pull one motor apart, you can put one together.

It’s like as long as you put it back the same way it came in, [00:51:00] then you’re okay. Well, I’m secretly asking, knowing that Andrew’s gonna come to my garage and inevitably I’m gonna end up working on his Viper. When you, when you, I was, you said, you said you were, you were down, but you said, I’ve never worked on a viper and I would like to, and and for everyone listening, I wanted you to know how good of a guide Mike is.

Cause I had an issue with this one. Now I had an issue with the other one too, but this one, two days after I got it, I go, you know, I take my girl out, we go to brunch, driving back. Car starts bucking like crazy. And it happened the day before and I was like, oh, cool, something’s gonna go wrong, but I’m gonna ignore it until I actually know what it’s because no lights, whatever.

And I get stranded on the side of the highway and I throw codes and it ended up being the crank shaft position sensor. I go online, nothing, can’t find anything. I found a foreign version of the, uh, service manual, one page at a time. No way to search it. And I’m lost. I can find the cam position sensor, sir, but I couldn’t find what to do.

Mike, literally, he goes, oh yeah, I know what to do. He sends me a PDF of the 400 [00:52:00] pages service manual, and he goes, I’m gonna have him on a list tomorrow, send you a picture. Fortunately, that night I was able to replace it, 15 part at, at, uh, AutoZone, but it got the car running again and it was easy to do.

Once I, the part, it was buddy. And he gave me another Viper mechanic’s number first. And that guy, he wasn’t really helpful. Like, he was like, oh, super easy. It’s like changing your oil, which clearly was like a jab at like, you should be able to do this. And I’m like, bro, I can’t find the sensor. Like I, I’m brand new to this car.

It’s on the rear side. But Mike helped me and, and because of Mike’s help, I was able to do it that night. And Mike, I appreciate that so much cause I got the car running and I gotta get that. Yeah. You’re saying the camaraderie between people that work on their cars, It’s awesome because I do so much work at Eric’s house, mainly because he’s got the awesome race deck floor and quick jack, but mainly because he is the most knowledgeable now, maybe the second most on this call, but he is the most knowledgeable guy I know working on cars.

He puts engines in other cars. He can do everything. [00:53:00] And so I won’t deny that if I have anything big to do, I’m coming to Eric’s house to do. It’s, I just trust them to help me just gimme a call. Like I said, I wanna add a viper to my resume, whether I own one or work on one. I’m gonna, I’m gonna get it on there, so it’s all good.

Right

In labor. I got the presses, man. I just did a set of Volkswagon ones the other day. 1200. They quoted you 1200, a thousand labor, 1000 for the labor, $800 for each control arm, not the swaybar inland. And they gave me a printout because once again I bought this car. The guy said it was perfect. We get it on the lift and there’s oil everywhere coming from the control arm.

So I contact, he’s a super rich guy in Florida that had like a bunch of Ferrari and I talked to him and he’s like, he’s like, oh, I’m so sorry, man. Like he offered to help me with the cost of getting that repair. So I told my buddy to send me a, a quote. So he might have told them that, you know, quote it, whatever the maximum price was.

But I think it’s fair to say that as much as I trust them, I, I don’t think I wanna shell out the, it would be [00:54:00] 1800 to get that done. That might be something if, if Eric, if you think you’re up for it, that would be something to do at your house. Let’s, let’s do a little home. Let’s do a little homework.

We’ll talk about this with Mike offline. Right?

Beer, beers and foods on me. Just make sure when you guys get the wheel alignment done, you get it done at a reputable place. Specifically those like gen three, gen four cars, if you get it done at a Dodge dealership, they actually strap the car down and add driver and passenger weight to the car and do the wheel alignment that way.

And that’s why the wheel alignments are usually like 200 bucks. Oh wow. That’s interesting. Okay, so you can do the work and then you just gotta do the alignment afterwards. Somewhere reputable. That’s easy enough. So that’s not too bad. Just make sure they have an actual wiper tech and one that actually knows how to open the hood.

That’s the true test. I dunno how to open the hood. I know this guy named, I know this guy named Mike. I know if he’s good for it, but the reason I was asking about, you know, how hard are they to work on and how, how easy are they to work on? Is that, In my imagination coming [00:55:00] from Shelby’s Pen, right? Yes. And with his influence in this, it’s probably very race car-like in some of its setup, which means certain pieces, like the suspension, like you said, it’s held on by two bolts.

That’s very much like, Hey, I need to be able to change this over the pit wall, you know, at Lamont’s in 30 seconds and get the driver back out on track. You know, that kind of thing. So if there’s a lot of that type of engineering involved in the Viper, for me, that’s not intimidating. That to me signals this is actually easier to work on than your standard production car where everything’s jammed in there because you’re trying to maximize people’s space or, or whatever it is.

Or maybe it’s over-engineered like some other vehicles are. So is that true or is. Or am I on the wrong path? 1000%. 90% of the stuff you can need to fi If you would need to fix it, you could fix it at the track, right? Like if you had to do an oil pan gas at the track, you could do it there. Like it’s not that hard.

I mean, on the Gen three s park plug wires, they put them underneath the intake manifold, which is rather annoying. You know, that’s probably the more difficult things to do, [00:56:00] but it’s really just pull the intake and then do the wires there. Overall, you can fix most things to the track, right? Like it’s a simple two bolt design on the coil overs.

Control arms are three bolts. Or it’s two bolts and a ball joint, so it’s nothing like crazy. They’re easy to get to. It’s easy to pull off wheel bearings, at least on the later gens are all just bolted in, so it’s, you can swap ’em out pretty quick. You know, it’s the brbo style caliper, so you just pop the pads in and out like you can.

So there was a lot of things like that that they did do. So you could do those things on the track if you need it. Go ahead. Speaking the track, I would love to know what you think needs to be checked. Cause when I first started getting into my car at Boxer and Evo three 30, a bunch of like fun cars. And it was really not until Eric and I mutual friend Sam, he had a, uh, a blue w r sti I that he started tracking before he got his fe eraser.

You know, I had a white Evo, he had the blue Subaru, he went to the same gym, saw each other every day. Eventually he’s like, you the, or you the Evo, you have the Subaru. And you know, we ended up talking about, he got me the track and [00:57:00] for five years now then doing all the, uh, you know, de events, fun. What would I need to check on this?

Because I can’t own this and not take it to the track at least once. But when I was under there, I saw a lot of it was a Florida car, 15 year old Dodge product. There’s a lot of stuff in the suspension components at at least that I see that need some, you know, repair. I would love to know what you recommend and maybe, you know, I’ll bring it in sometime we can run it over and gimme the ok.

One other side question is the transmission. I know they’re all the Trex, they’re pretty bulky. I notice a lot of like lop, so I’m in third, fourth, and I get on the gas, get off. I can hear like some metal and metal in there and you know, it’s 20,000 miles, 15 years old. Had five owners and I’m sure they beat on it.

I don’t know if it needs a new clutch or if that’s just, there is some play in that transmission. It’s just one thing that worries me. Cause I don’t want, you know, you can fix everything on the track except for the transmission. Yeah. That would be a, uh, that’d be a bad one. But, you know, not the end of the world.

Could be fluids, it could be the throwout bearing could be going [00:58:00] bad in it. And that’s like kind of typical with the older age on almost all the generations too. The throwout bearings wear out. But if you’re gonna be doing track stuff, you, of course you want to check over your shocks. You know, they’re probably original, so there, there’s a good chance they might be leaking.

Check your wheel bearings, check your ball joints, control arm swaybar links. Make sure all the suspension stuff looks good. All your brakes looks good. Brake fluids probably never been changed. Power steering fluids probably never been changed. The big thing on your car that I actually had an issue today is on the sum of the Gen three s, the crank bolt can back out.

So make sure you torque that thing down because like today I was picking up a customer car and I get to the shop and I hear this squeaking. Well, the crank bolt started to back itself out, pulling the pulley off the crank, which would be very bad. You can do a lot of damage that way. So like, Check over those things.

Make sure the oil’s topped off. Yeah, I mean, you’re all your basic track stuff. Well, I don’t wanna speak for Eric, but Eric, I’d love if we could do a road trip. Hop in, Eric, you drive the viper up. We’ll visit Mike, check out the shop. We’ll get that thing up there and uh, get it [00:59:00] track ready, hopefully get it inspected.

And actually that, that’s a really great segue that you brought this up, Andrew. So Mike, if you were looking at Andrew’s Viper and it needs new shocks or it needs new this or new that, are there certain mods that he should be thinking about making that, you know, aren’t outrageous? Like the stuff we were talking about, oh, we’re gonna throw cans in it, do headers and all those kinda stuff.

The way I look at it, and the way I was brought up was if you’re gonna replace a factory part, try to find a racer part or a higher quality part. Cause a, it’s gonna last you longer on the street. It’s gonna give you maybe a different ride or different feel you’re looking for, but is. Is there something about the Viper you’re like, you know, you should really consider modding this.

If you were gonna track it or autocross it or something like that. Just solely due to the age I would replace those coil over, it’s your entry level coil over like a BC coil over or run you. I probably have 14, 1500 for the set. Again, that’s entry level. You can go crazy, like I just ordered a set of Penskes for like six grand for a customer’s car today.

You can really go all that place. The bushings and the control arms are [01:00:00] probably old and maybe cracked and dry rotted. You can upgrade those with Del Rand bushings. Like you push the old bushings out, you put the Del Rans in. And between that and new shocks, it transforms the way that car handles. It’s totally a different animal and it’s amazing.

Like a close friend of mine slash car that we kind of sponsored, he’s really big into autocross. It’s got Penske racing shocks on it. Del Rand bushings all the way around on all four corners and he races the balls off this thing weekend after weekend at every autocross of event he can. Driving that car versus a stock car is mind blowingly different.

First thing I noticed, maybe in the last one I drove, that one did have leaky shocks. This one, the shocks aren’t leaking, but you know, I go over the speed bumps in my neighborhood and I hear creaky noises and stuff. I uh, I noticed the car tram lines like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I remember my first time coming off an exit ramp, obviously pushing a little bit, coming onto the highway.

No cars. But it pulled me like in the second lane, it pulled me back into the first lane, like, oh shit, is something breaking? I’m ready to like, saw the wheel and like save it. I was like, oh [01:01:00] no. That’s just following the lines of the road, which 3 45. They grab, they grab everything they do, they, they pull you all over the place and it’s something to get used to.

I mean, I had the Lotus with no stability or attraction control and 190 horsepower, 1400 less pounds. But this thing, it’s a different beast and it, I’ve never driven anything like it as much as it’s pretty easy to handle. You know, I’m gonna wait until I get it on the track before I make my pool. Judgment.

So if you change out the suspension and the tires, 95% of that tram railing will go away. I figured, yeah. Suspension’s probably overdue. 15 years is probably about time, which it’s, I’m sure that I could go five years of street driving this and not have to do it, but I wanna drive this car for what it was meant to do.

So earlier I asked you what was the best viper if you were buying your first one. Mm-hmm. But what’s the best, if you’re buying a track or performance weekend warrior type of viper, what would you recommend for somebody that wanted to do more spirited [01:02:00] driving? Personally, if I was gonna go buy a Viper that I was gonna dedicate to track use, I’d probably look into like a gen three that was possibly an R type, because you can pick ’em up for cheaper, which means you can throw the work that you need into it to make it outperform everything else on the track.

Now again, we’re not talking like ACR level here. Like if you go out and buy a 2017 acr, you throw that thing at any track, any auto cross track, it’s like gonna be a monster. There’s almost no com competing with it when you have what the rear wings on those things have like. 1700 pounds of down force, or I think with full gills removed and all the vents over the wheels, it’ll generate over 3000 pounds of down force or something like that.

Yep. So are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. That’s wild with the front. I know. I remember seeing a forum post that a guy trailering his car to the track and he was getting five less miles per gallon because he had his ACR on the back of an open trailer and the down fors just on the highway from that was throwing things off like crazy.

Over a thousand pounds of down. That’s, that’s wild. I’ve seen any car does that. It is being in one of those cars, right. Like my, [01:03:00] a buddy of mine bought one directly from the factory. We were on our way home, you know, in Mexico, of course he broke like a little over a hundred and you just feel the car squat, he hits like one 20 and it’s almost like the car’s slowing down because there’s so much.

Down force that yes, it’s accelerating, but it’s not doing what it was doing from the 80 to 120 at that point. So it’s just wild to feel. So this is a great opportunity for me to tell a little story was we transitioned to my next thought. Andrew mentioned earlier about his excursion in an ACR with a gentleman from our organization that owns a 2017 supposedly.

The story is he bought one of the last ones, you know, it’s got his name on it and all this fun stuff and beautiful car. It’s a black with green stripes and I’ve had the privilege of riding in it several times and the first time I got to ride in it, Was at Watkins Glen, you know, we were just there not long ago.

Uh yep. You and I together. And so it reminded me of that story. And so, you know, every opportunity I can get to ride in a different car, especially as a coach, I will obviously take it because I wanna learn about the car [01:04:00] and, you know, see how people are driving all that. So I, I’ve ridden with this gentleman many, many times.

He’s gotten some private coaching. Now he is come a long way on his journey to, you know, where he is. And now he has his viper. We get out there and you know, he already had it. Everything uncoupled, we’ll call it that, right? So full down force, ready to go. And I’m looking at this thing, hey, it’s on street tires, whatever.

We pull out of pit lane, which is really long at the Glen. And he is like, Hey man, Natalia. Right away, I gotta let this car warm up before we can really go fast. And I’m like, we’re already like hauling ass. Okay. And then I’m like, I’m like, cool, alright. It’s all good, you know? And I’ve had an, I’ve had an experience with this car throughout the weekend, and I’m with, at this time, I’m there with my M three race car, the closing rate of the Viper.

You’d look in your rear view mirror, there’s nobody there. And two seconds later he was brushing his teeth in your rear view mirror. You’re like, he was teleported there, but you know, which was his closing speed. So now I’m in the car and he’s like, all right, we gotta let it warm up, you know, this kind of thing.

And we’re still, we’re booking and I’m like, wow, this thing is a rocket ship. So we come around the second [01:05:00] full lap and he’s like, all right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna open it up now. And I’m like, we’re gonna open it up. Do we get it from, from turn two to the bus stop? I mean, we’re at a buck and a half in fourth gear in like no time.

And he goes, by the way, This is over the chatterbox. He’s like, I’ve been told I need to maintain 150 mile an hour maximum. So he’d hit 150 and then he would just lift his foot, right? Because his closing rate was so big compared to everybody else. And I’m like, dude, I’m not understanding. I mean, we’re, we’re hauling butt.

And he goes, you’re gonna understand in a second we go into the bus stop and he b lifts his foot and he doesn’t even break. And the car just basically flies in there like now at like a buck 20 or whatever, we’re gonna die. Right? There’s no way we’re making it out the other side because he’s coming in like, I’m in a, in a Honda Civic, like full out, right?

And I’m like, bro. And he’s like, just hang on. And he, he just quickly jabs the wheel and then gets back on the throttle and the car just like, Absorbs itself into the asphalt. [01:06:00] And I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. And I start laughing, right? And he’s just like, he’s like giggling a little bit as he’s driving.

And then he finally had to hit the brakes and turn six, right? Because he is like, oh, I can’t go through here this fast. So he gets on the brakes and it’s like freaking anti-gravity. And I’m like, holy cow. And then back on the throttle and the away we go. And we are just like reeling in cars, like left and right and every lap faster and faster and faster.

I’ve never been in a car that could get around the glen in sub two minutes, you know? And, and not even with the professional driver behind the wheel. I mean, that’s how good this ACR R was. It was a mind blowingly fast. And I walked away from the car and he’s like, so what do you think? I look around the paddock.

Y’all, you changed my, depends real quick. Yeah. After that, but I’m like, y’all can keep all of this stuff, all of, because ther is like, King. And it’s one of those things that I don’t think even me telling the story, people will believe until you experience. So what I’m trying to tell you is if you get a chance to ride in a late Gen Viper, do it.

Do [01:07:00] not hesitate to do it. Cuz it’s amazing if you trust the driver. Yes, that’s a hundred percent true. I gotta put that in perspective of Motorsport a little bit. The Viper came on the scene, best nineties car built in the eighties to compete against what? So if we look at that time period, you’re looking at nine 60.

Oh wait. Well, no, you still had the Yeah, not back then. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. C4, Corvette and the ZR one didn’t come out until 1995, and that’s when the Gen two vipers were starting to come on the scene. You had the 9 64 from Porsche. You had a couple Ferrari that weren’t anything to write home about, and maybe a couple other oddball things like, oh yeah, the Jaguar XG two 20.

You know, the random stuff like that. That was in that hy, what we would consider hypercar genre now. So the Viper didn’t really have any competition until later. And Corvette steps in and UPS their game big time, especially with the C5 and C6 rs. So there’s been a huge battle over the years. Huge rivalry between Dodge and [01:08:00] Chevy when it came to that world.

I don’t know that anybody else really appreciated it as much as some of the rest of us did. Cause the Porsche guy’s like, ah, whatever. We we’re just gonna build a faster nine 11 and move the engine closer to the driver every year. It’ll be perfect. Don’t worry about it. I wonder, you know, as fans of the Viper, how did we feel about the rivalry and did the Corvette finally beat the Viper in the end?

I mean, let’s discount the mid engine Corvette for a minute and let’s maybe compare the C6 and C7 to the A C R. I don’t know. I’ve been in all of those cars. And to this day, I know I’m a little bit biased, but those ACRs are another animal, like you’re saying, ungodly, an average driver can get behind the wheel of one of those things and kill it outta track the way the down force and everything else feels.

It’s just so hard to compete against. And with all the track records, it broke. I know the Corvette beats some of them, but it’s just a whole nother animal in comparison. Plus Corvette’s do what? 30,000 cars a year. That’s how many Viper are on the road? They did 32,000 from 92 to 17. So like it’s [01:09:00] just a whole different animal as far as rarity goes, which then gives them that allure.

So I had a C6 grant sport. First car I took to the track, which pretty comparable to this. I mean, it didn’t make the same power, but it was very analog. It didn’t have as many driver controls. I had a C7 Z 51, which that thing drove for you. It was too easy to drive, and this requires attention. So did the c6, but I, I didn’t have that.

I’ve never owned a z I know the Zs on paper will beat them with everything except for maybe road holding and a hundred to zero. Like you said, they, they make the same amount. For a year of corvet that they’ve made total of the vipers, which was another reason. I mean, I’ve always wondered one of these same thing, poster on the wall when I was in high school, and I’ve always, you know, always need to have, I don’t care if they’re a little bit faster, it’s, you know, the exclusivity, I guess is a, is a draw.

And also the v1. I mean, you don’t get that in a lot of domestic. There isn’t many that aren’t trucks that have D tens to put this kinda power down. We’re gonna talk about the truck. I promise we wouldn’t, I hinted [01:10:00] to it earlier. I wanna close out this thought about the Viper itself. We joke about this on the drive-through and Brad’s brought up several times.

Do you know there are still new vipers that are unsold at Chrysler dealerships throughout the United States? You can buy a brand new 2017 ACR off the dealer lot today. God knows what the markup is. They’re still out there. They’re a lot. What I’m getting at is, you know, the Viper was sunset now, five, six years ago.

At this point, we’re closing in on, right. If you think about, you know, they announced that they were closing out the production run in 16 to say, Hey, we’re gonna have a few seventeens, and then that’s gonna be it. We’re done. No more Vipers. End of story. Get it now while sales are hot. Then Fiat sort of hinted.

There’s gonna be a resurgence of the Viper. They talked about a V8 powered Viper, and I’m like, oh, well they’re borrowing a Ferrari mode. There’s gonna be some Maserati concoction that they’re gonna come up with. It’ll probably look awesome. But you know, that never happened either. And now Chrysler’s been absorbed into STIs, right?

The Borg, right. They [01:11:00] are the fourth largest auto manufacturer on the planet now, but we still don’t know what’s happening over there. Right? They’ve talked recently about Sunset setting the Hemi, because of the, the evolution, right? The EV revolution. They’ve talked about, Hey, this is, it party’s over for the Challenger and the charger as we know them today.

But it still brings up the question, what about the Viper? Everybody seems to be building a supercar right now, whether it’s an EV or otherwise, I think it’s time to reintroduce. Hellcat Engine, they’re gonna put it in there. They put it in the minivan, they’re gonna put it in the vi. Right. There you go.

Vice with the Hellcat engine. I mean, I hope they don’t, but one of my favorite means that I’ve definitely shared with Eric and the guys is like all the other car brands, you know, they’re like, oh, how do we make our cars more fuel efficient? And then it’s a Dodge Dealers do a line of Cokes ass and, uh, let’s pull a hell cat in a minivan.

Yeah, it’s like the Wolf of Wall Street. When it comes to like the [01:12:00] future of it, I don’t know if they would be able to bring back a All Electric Viper and be able to call it a Viper and like, I don’t know if the diehards would, would buy it if you put it under the Viper name. Like if they brought a supercar back and made it look like a Viper, but named it something else, I think it would be a lot more accepted.

The Viper, at the end of the day, they wanted to make it raw or it needed to be in a manual. It needed to have the V 10. And those words needs, and that was why they built them the way they built them. So if they came out with something like an All electric Viper or something along those lines, you know, I’d worry that it would come out looking like the electric Mustang.

Like that’s not a, to me it would, it would dilute the brand name too, or the, you know, the model name. In some way, but, and this is something we bring up often, which is important, which is also why we don’t refer to the Maee as the Mustang machi because there it’s a Ford Escape. But we’ll, we’ll leave that where it’s, yes, but the, the, the name, the name Viper, just like Cobra or even nine 11 and other things, if you put that on something else, [01:13:00] it just changes the whole dynamic.

So I guess you just have to sunset it. And to your point, I often wondered, yes, I get the purest side of the Viper, but would the Viper have been that much better with some sort of double clutch PDK system, you know, maybe borrowed from Mercedes or developed by Porsche or something like that to really squeeze out Corvette and, and some of these other, you know, supercars that are still around, they probably would’ve sold more vipers.

It pains me to say it, if they made ’em an automatic, if you could put your golf clubs in the back and make it an automatic, they probably would’ve sold two sets. Of course, yeah. Two sets. As is the Corvette’s standard. Two sets of golf clubs. And that’s why like, I hate to. Say it, but that’s why, in my opinion, the Corvette sell more.

Cuz it’s not like they’re easier to work on. Where do you put the golf clubs in? The c8? I just wanna bring that up real quick. Front trunk, back trunk. Actually, I know they said they could do two, right? That was, that was their whole thing. I don’t know why that’s always a selling point, but it can fit too.

That was rhetoric. That was rhetoric. I just wanna point that, hey, you put one in the passenger seat. [01:14:00] One of the passengers seat next to you with the roof off and then, oh, there we go. There we go. Backdrop. I worry that if they did bring something back, I don’t know if they would name it the Viper. There was, you know, there’s always rumors and there’s always rumors from the higher ups in Chrysler and everything else that come to some of the events.

It’s like, oh, like, well, if you could build a viper, like what would you guys be willing to give up? Would it be the B 10? Would it be the stick? Would it be room drive? Would it be mid engine? You know, what are those things to give up? And that’s what gives us some hope that they would bring back something with how all the EV is going and everything else.

I don’t know if they’d be able to bring back a Viper and be able to sell it underneath the Viper brand name and have the support and dedication that the current owners have for the car. And we saw hints of that were beyond the grapevine rumors. There was a gentleman that had a bespoke Ferrari built that was very viper like in its look.

We actually talked about it on the drive-through episodes earlier in, I think season one. It was that we brought that up and we thought that was really interesting. We’re like, wait, is this foreshadowing by way? [01:15:00] Of Ferrari, you know, part of now the parent company STIs owns all of this stuff, which has also jogged my thoughts to say, this is the opportunity for Alpha Romeo to make a comeback with a viper like vehicle.

Let’s not call it a viper, but that would be their opportunity to introduce a hyper sports car or something like that. You know, along these lines, it would make sense. There’s been rumors there too, that they wanna bring back the G T V. What’s that gonna look like? What’s that gonna be? You know, that’s traditionally been a two-door sports car, you know, stuff like that.

So maybe there’s a chance, but I wonder the timing is right. But maybe not the formula to your point. Right. It’s not a viper as we know it. And I think once like supercars and stuff do start coming out, I think they’ll be able to build something along those lines. But it’s gonna be pretty hard, at least at first to bring the camaraderie back into having an electric car.

Cuz most of these guys are like, I want all gas all the time. Like, I don’t want an electric car. They don’t make noise. They don’t, you know, it’s the diehard fans of when you buy a Viper, you’re [01:16:00] buying it because it’s this raw machine, and now you’re gonna go out and buy an electric car that Yeah. Is fast, but you’re, you’re losing some of that, so that might be hard to sell.

Yeah. And when everybody’s grocery getter can do zero to 60 in sub three seconds, I mean, what do you need a supercar for? Right. So it comes down to styling at that point. It comes down to amenities, interior, but to your point, the sound, the one of the things about the Viper, even compared to an R eight or a Lamborghini mm-hmm.

Which basically leverage the same V 10. Yeah. The Viper has a distinct sound. I, I bring it back to those old days of the screaming Audi quatros because it sounds more like an Audi than it does, you know, a V 10 Lamborghini or anything like that. So that’s part of that experience is that sound. And I mean, obviously you both can attest to that.

It’s, it’s unique and it’s, it’s absolutely amazing. So two more pieces of Viper, let’s say lore or part of the Viper culture. We hinted at it several times is the Viper truck. So Mike, do you end up working on those two? What’s the deal with the Viper truck? So they’re actually pretty cool. I’ve had a couple at my shop [01:17:00] here and there.

It is actually the same motor that’s in Andrew’s car behind you. And the two doors were stick. The four doors were automatic. They’re pretty cool trucks. It’s badass to say, yeah, I’ve got a Viper motor in my truck, and it’ll, you know, roast the tires cuz there’s no weight in the rear. So that aspect of things is cool.

I actually work with a guy not too far from me that specializes in the Viper, in the Viper trucks. He specializes in those trucks. So usually we work together and I send him some stuff that way if I have to work on the Viper trucks, but he calls me for any of the performance stuff sometimes. So it’s one of those things where they’re sweet.

I would definitely rock one to drive it around. I mean, listen, trucks always get terrible gas mileage, so why not drive around with a big V 10? Like that’s pretty badass. But you know, I mean it competes against things like that. SVT Lightning and let’s build these low, low Lowrider trucks essentially that can go fast instead of.

Now everything jumps specs wise, you know, same boat or power plant as the Gen three viper that Andrew has. They built those in very low numbers. Right? Only for like maybe a year or two. I believe it [01:18:00] was oh five and oh six, there may have been 2004. I’m not very well versed as far as the Viper truck aspect of things Go.

It’s not, it’s a cool piece of nostalgia. Right? And if you think about it, the marketing campaign was brilliant because they literally sold it as the Viper truck, and when it debuted, there was a viper on a trailer being pulled by the Viper pickup. And I just thought that’s, that’s amazing. I mean, that’s pretty cool, especially color matching blue with the white stripes, you know, that classic iconic viper look.

Although for me it’s still the three spoke wheels and a red targa, but you know, we’ll leave that where it is. But that actually leads me into probably one of the most brilliant. If not conceived by Chrysler, but in partnership ad campaigns ever, which was the probably long forgotten by a lot of our audience, if they even saw it in the first place, which is NBC’s show called Viper, which debuted in the nineties and was basically a redo of night rider.

Had the same [01:19:00] storyline. I hate to say I’ve binged all 80 episodes. I wrote an article about this, you can search for it on our website. I thought season one was amazing and that is actually really what cemented it for me. Could really fall in love with the Vipers, bringing that kind of night rider.

Forward because I got to see the Viper on the regular. I got to hear it. It was on adventures, it was doing all that cool stuff. But what I thought was neat was there was a lot of foreshadowing in that and it was really smart on the part of Chrysler, and I pointed this out in the, in the article too, there were a lot of Chrysler prototypes in various episodes of the show, parked along the side of the road, strategically placed in scenes of the show where, you know, they fly in with the Viper sideways and jump out and you’re like, wait, what’s that?

Uh, Chrysler Espresso in the background there, you know, weird concept car that they were trying to make, look futuristic because the show was supposed to be set somewhere, somewhere in the future. What I also thought was really unique, Is they also sneak peak, the G t s on that show. If you watch, I believe it was like season two ish or so, there’s a blue g t s [01:20:00] coop during a traffic stop where there’s a bunch of, you know, typical Chrysler intrepids blocking traffic and this blue coop is just sitting there and then the Viper team shows up and it’s just kind of in the background.

Mm-hmm. And you don’t pay too much attention to it. You’re like, because now we all realize, oh, like the GTS is the thing, but back then you’re like, holy crap, what is this? Right? Yeah. This is pretty cool. Part of our petrol heads of a certain age. Right. And so we grew up with this show and then it disappeared and whatnot.

So what’s which, what are your guys thoughts on it? So, ironically enough, I’ve only seen actually a couple episodes. So to put this in perspective, I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen any, I was born the same year. The Viper came out all through the nineties. I was like a young kid. It’s a tree, let me tell you.

All right, well I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna have to download it or find it on Hulu or some crap. Yeah, and watch all of em. You let me know what the best episode is. I’ll watch the best. Season one is actually the best, and I’ll be honest with you guys. The show was technically canceled at the end of season one, but then I don’t know who petitioned.

I gotta go back into my, my lore and trivia there. [01:21:00] Seasons two and three were brought back with a different cast, and then season four. Four, they actually brought back the original actors and the original cast and that’s actually really good to kind of bookend it. If you watch Seasons One and season four, I have all of them, by the way, I can hook you guys up.

Oh, perfect. Uh, to check it out. It’s, it’s absolutely amazing. But what was also cool about that, aside of all the things they had to do to build the defender, which was, you know, kit, let’s call it that they spent so much money in the first season just on C G I, and this was cutting edge cgi I to do this transformation of, you know, a stock Viper into the defender on screen in real time.

They said it every time they did it, it cost them pike, you know, a hundred grand or something to do the c g I was nuts. Later they made it really cheesy and you know, and then they eventually went back to that as computers got better and less expensive and all that kind of stuff. But even there, the idea of this viper coop.

In the form of the defender, you kind of look at it and go, this is a thing, this is possible. And I wonder if that inspired Chrysler or if they already [01:22:00] knew they were gonna go with the Cobra and then the Daytona Cobra. Right. And I’m, you know, who decided, or Lee just said, we’re gonna do this if it worked for Pontiac, it’s gotta work for Chrysler, it’s gotta work the Dodge.

Right. So it’s, it’s kinda, it’s, it’s kind of cheesy and corny when you look back over it, but it’s also somewhat awesome at the same time and some of the tech and the things that were there. And so I recommend it if you haven’t seen it, but I’ll hook you guys up. You gotta check it out if nothing else, to check out the article on our website to get a fast forward on all that.

And I tell you what, I’ve mentioned it before, if I had to own one Hollywood car, it would be a defender. And by the way, Yes, and, and reason being, they were built on actual vipers. So if there’s low numbers out there, there’s cars that are missing. They’re Hollywood cars and they didn’t use like some old Chevy Nova and make it sound like a viper.

They were actually built on top of production vipers. So kind of cool. Very interesting. Kind of cool, you know, couple of those. 32,000 are still out there in Hollywood, running around. So As the Defender. As the Defender, yeah. The [01:23:00] defender’s pretty, that’s a badass. It’s not an ugly car at all. It kind of looks like a, like a Gen four, gen five viper in some, you know, at certain angles, especially the taillights and the nose and stuff like it with the thinner headlights, you know, I kind of see it was like foreshadowing of what the Viper could be in the future, right?

Yeah. I mean, they definitely took some of the design cues, right? And the story there is the defender was actually developed by a famous company that does like movie cars, right? It would develop all these like specialty cars. And so it was their design built on top of that Viper chassis. So I thought that was really kind of cool that somebody had the ingenuity to say, well, we could take this, we could make it sleek and, you know, make it a coop and do all these kinds of things.

And it’s really neat. And it’s still, like you mentioned, it still looks good today. Yeah. Although it’s still had the three spoke wheels. Well, I guess you like them, huh? Uh, just a little bit. I mean, you know, I, I like them for what they are. That’s the only thing on those cars that date them. It’s very true, but it’s very unique.

It’s a very vibrant thing. No other car had is a three spoke wheel that looks like that. You know, not even the smart [01:24:00] cars with their three bolt wheels, but uh, I also hear they’re really hard to get tires for cuz it’s a unique sizes like a 16 by something bizarre. Yep. The three or something.

Yeah, if you try to find them, you have to buy ’em used or they do group buys for the people who have those cars. Cause nah, they don’t manufacture ’em. So you gotta find used ones or old ones, which is wild. So before we wrap up and kind of close up, I have a pit stop like question to ask you, Mike, because we’ve geeked out here for, you know, over an hour about Vipers.

We’re all over the map and talking about really fun stuff and stories. But I gotta ask, is the Viper the sexiest car of all time in your opinion? Ooh, I love the Viper, but lately pains me to say this and I’m sure plenty of people will be pissed about it. Lately I’ve been loving the new pest GT four. I still love the Viper.

Like, I think the ACR is like one of the sexiest cars like I’ve ever seen going back to those old GSRs, like I think they’re gorgeous cars. I think it’s definitely up there, but I, the [01:25:00] Porsches are starting to. Grow a spot in my heart because I fit in them and they look good and they’re pretty quick. So since you get to work with Vipers on the regular, maybe you get a little desensitized to them and that’s fine.

1000%. Oh yeah. So, you know, if I asked you the question, if you had a three car garage and unlimited funds, what would you fill it with? Anything but a viper, what would it be? Ooh. Anything but a viper. Yeah, you’re, I mean, because you, you, you’ve already, you deal with them on the regular, so is that really fair?

I, I guess you’re right. I would get new GT four. I’d have to get like a truck. Like I’d want a, like a Dodge dually and I would probably get some badass, I don’t know, maybe like a newer M three to daily drive that is ugliest car of all time. I love this question. Who ugliest car? PC Cruiser with the wood grain.

Oh man, that’s up. That’s a dodge spot

breaker. And then, uh, take back and give PC Cruiser. And, uh, in, in case you need another recent hate, Skyler, most [01:26:00] hatable woman on all tv. It’s cause she got on the PT Cruiser. That Aztec does something to me. Like, I don’t know why, who thought that was a great design, but it’s not for me. All right, so as we close out, one final thought, Mike, you mentioned several times, you know, as a now longtime member of the Viper Club and Viper Owners Association, et cetera.

You know, one of their slogans is Come for the cars, but stay for the people. Do you wanna talk about the Viper Club and, and why Andrews should join or why someone else should join? You know, what’s it all about? So really it’s all about, at the end of the day, the camaraderie, right? Like, I’ve got guys that have bought cars, bought vis, didn’t get involved, and then ended up selling the cars a couple years later because, They weren’t going out with other guys, they weren’t doing stuff with the car.

So they’re like, well, I’m just gonna sell it. And then you have guys that join the clubs that get involved and go out to all these events and get to meet all these great people and just have a blast. You’ve got Viper guys that have millions of dollars, and you’ve got guys that. Our blue collar, [01:27:00] like just got their dream car, like love it, don’t have a ton of money but love their car.

You can all hang out in the same room together and you would never guess who was who. Everyone is company. They’re super modest and I’ve gone, you know, I mean we’ve gone to track days and everything else and you meet guys in Ferrari clubs and Porsche clubs and some of them are Hoy Toy in other clubs.

Whereas like in the Viper Club I’ve only met a handful, few of guys that were like ever really true like dickheads in the Viper Club. It’s one of those things where you just meet so many great people and have such a good time at every event you go to. If you can get involved, get involved and you know, I mean it’s at the end of the day, you make the most of whatever your situation is.

If you want to get involved to come do stuff, you’re gonna have a blast. There’s no way you’re not gonna have fun. And if you don’t want to go do stuff, that’s fine. I joke all the time and I’m. Pretty active in our area. And I run a lot of events and it’s so hard to get people to get off their couch, to have fun with us.

Like if I’m not calling them during the week saying, Hey, like we’re going to this event, it’s a car cruise and we’re gonna go do a tour yingling and like hang out and [01:28:00] have lunch. They don’t show up. It’s like, guys come out, have a good time. The guys that come, ah, it was so much fun. And then everyone online gets upset that they didn’t go.

You know, it’s one of those things where if you can get involved, get involved and do it. Like I was just down at in Miami last year for a National Viper event. There was like 200 vipers down in Miami. We did a track day, we did dinners, we did all sorts of, did you drive your Viper down there? So, no, I was, I played support vehicle and fixed cars going on my way down.

Nice. But I did have the opportunity, a customer or a friend of mine was like, We went to the track day and I just was going to hang out and ride bitch. He’s like, oh, you’re driving today. Here’s the keys and take it out on the track. Have fun. Oh, okay. Well good friends. I’m in. So like I’ve gotten to do some things like that and that’s where the benefit of working on these and being trusted with them, you just meet so many good people that it just, it’s crazy the amount of nice guys that you meet and the other like, not opportunities, but like there’s just so many different cool things you get to go and see and do.

And again, all [01:29:00] through like the camaraderie of the car. I’ve been in other car clubs and stuff and none of them have ever been like anything I’ve experienced with the Viper Owners Association. I think to the point, if you can’t. Afford a Viper and the Viper’s still on your dream list as your dream car.

You’ve been salivating after. Mm-hmm. There’s some really excellent alternatives from the, the Hemi Chargers to, you know, the scat packs and all the challengers and all these different types of things that are on some of the other models. I mean, they’re obviously making more horsepower than the Viper in some respects, especially the Demonn at a thousand Horsepower and all that craziness that’s going on there.

Dodge made some really cool stuff, and I think the Viper gave way to them being at the front end of modern muscle cars because when you look at. The entries by Ford and even by Chevy, and, and let’s discount the Corvette because it’s, it’s really achieved supercar status. Now they can hang their hat on saying, we revolutionize the modern muscle car.

And, and I gotta tip my hat to them. And I, and like I said, I think the Viper gave way to that. [01:30:00] And I think what you’re doing at Havoc by keeping these cars engaged, keeping their owners engaged, maintaining these collections, working with these folks at the national level, going to these track events and, and bringing Viper enthusiasm, not just Motorsports enthusiasm, but about this particular brand to the surface is awesome.

And that’s why we get excited about. It and folks like Andrew and I can geek out with you for over an hour about these cars. So, you know, I gotta say in closing, Mike, I think this has been awesome. Maybe it was a little hard to follow for some folks, but if you’re a Viper owner or maybe you’re a Viper fan, hopefully you learn something from this episode.

But I’ll leave you with this. If you wanna learn more about Havoc performance, check out their website at www.havocperformance.comorfollowthemonfacebookandinstagramoremailmikedirectlyatmikehavocperformance.com cuz he’s got all your answers, everything you wanna know, everything you wanna look for. Super personal guys, super knowledgeable.

So we thank you for coming on the show. I think this has been absolutely [01:31:00] fantastic. I really appreciate it. What I loved coming on and doing this, what’s that? Instagram handle havoc performance. Okay? It’s all havoc. It’s all havoc, performance. It’s all havoc performance. But again, if anyone ever has any questions, and same thing with you guys, if you have any questions, but I’m definitely dragging your asses out for our Snakes on the Mountain event.

Ooh. So make sure your car is ready. It’s basically a private event. We do it usually at a guy’s house that has a car collection, so you get to see that as well. But it’s performance Fords, so like four gts, cobras, Shelby stuff. Vipers will invite like track hawks and demons and stuff will come, and then it’s also Ferrari.

So it’s a competition between the three. Last year I had almost 40 vipers show up. And where is, where is this at? Is this at Pocono or where is This is uh, it’s about 20 minutes from my house. Depending on whose place we’re doing it at this year, we’re gonna do it over in like SA Valley, over near Lehigh College.

So it’s more of like a hill climb, mountain run type of deal. Think of it like private cars and coffee. Right. I gotcha, gotcha. Like hang out. We usually do a car cruise afterwards and [01:32:00] lunch. You know, we show up at like nine o’clock, hang out till like 11, go do a car cruise for an hour, hour and a half. Stop and get lunch, usually around one, two o’clock when the places are slow and, uh, then everyone either goes on their way or we go do something else.

You guys, that sounds like a blast. All boys. Take it easy. Hey, it was fun. Hey, have a good night. Thanks again.

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