Your not biased or anything, are ya?

And how loooonnnnngg did it take before the Corvette became even REMOTELY close to the Viper in performance??? And WHO was it that moved from ChryCo to GM and pushed for a Corvette that would actually be able to compete with a Viper? You ever notice how much the Vette began to look like the Viper after Bob went to GM?

The Corvette has been good for GM because it displays the corporation’s ability to compete with the best sports cars in the word. The Viper, in contrast, is iconic only because it is so excessive and crass. It’s the kind of car a 13-year-old would design.

How does that help Chrysler’s branding, particularly given the rest of its product line? A modern Jeepster would have been a more useful halo car than the Viper. But because Lutz has such a small one, he had to insist on the ultimate compensation car.

You obviously don’t know much. The Viper 8.0L V10 is a totally unique engine from the Ram 8.0L V10.

Just like the GM had several 6.0L V8 engines. The previous generation CTS-V 6.0L V8 was different from the Pontiac GTO 6.0L V8, and that was different from the GM truck 6.0L V8.

Loved the proto in Chicago.

Then heard how heavy it would be…Lutz said 2700 lb…I thought “dang that will be 2900 production” (guess who was closer?).

Then the “top/trunk stories” started to come out.

Then it got pasted by the Miata is every head to head.

Then the first year reliability was aweful…

and the second…

three in a row…

rhymes with “Fiero”.

One owner satifaction survey has seen it plummet from 80 something (100 point scale) to 59. Must be great to live with. The Miata has been 80s right along.

To finish it off…they admit they lose 10k per.
Priced for profit this rat would have to run with the 350Z and S2000. Got spanked by a profitable 22k car.

And the man responsible for the only redeaming feature, styling, went elsewhere.

Total Failure.

This is the car that says “Quadruple Lutz” to me.

Thanks Bob.

Love and bullets,

Bunter

Ummmm, exactly how long has the Viper been around and what model year Viper put up that 7.22 time?

The Viper has come a very long way from the orginial model that arrived in the 1990s.

I wouldn’t call the chassis of a car that set the production-car lap record (bettering the best that Porsche has to offer at a fraction of the price) on the Nurburgring ‘barely refined’.

I would. But then to me, refinement is on-road refinement. Yes, the Viper is very track refined (e.g. perfected, optimised for the track, etc). But it’s a bad on road car. Always has been, going back to the first generation giving people burns on the side of their right leg.

That said, the Viper is still awesome. For me, the appeal is that it’s not refined.

First, yes, Bob Lutz has been involved in some ways with the development of some very good and even successful products. The scope and scale of his involvement is probably not something any of us is going to figure out.

Second, yes, Bob Lutz has often been in favor of RWD cars – some of them extremely interesting (Merkur XR4Ti, Pontiac GTO). But most of these were, from the start, going to be niche products. Sure, the Pontiac Solstice is great to look at, and decent to drive (especially the turbo version), but so what? What if it was perfect?

There’s a very important balance, or tension, between cars that “car people” want (i.e. many of the cars Lutz really likes and that we might really like) and smart business decisions.

And letting Lutz divert attention and resources to niche products, while cool, is a dubious business decision. Even though you get benefits from having interesting cars in the lineup, it seems like the interesting niche products haven’t succeeded in pulling people into the showroom.

GM isn’t picking up G6 sales because of the image or draw of the Solstice.

Finally, at times, everybody has to deal with bad luck. Lutz being in the automotive industry for a long time, some of it is inevitable. The Saturn Astra? Which one of us, 3 years ago, would have said it was a bad idea to bring the Astra to the U.S.? I still crow every day about how Ford should bring the Euro Focus to the States.

That’s where good business instinct some come in, however. I know as well as you do that currency-wise, Ford can’t just ship the Focus from Europe to the U.S. and call it a day. They have to build them in North America. Lutz and his associates should have known better – even when the U.S. currency was stronger.

I wouldn’t call the chassis of a car that set the production-car lap record (bettering the best that Porsche has to offer at a fraction of the price) on the Nurburgring ‘barely refined’.

Actually, most of the cars here aren’t bad machines.

I’ll agree, not bad machines, but the competition is better in terms of quality & resale. Two very important considerations.

Isn’t the purpose of sites like TTAC to try and steer people away from popular-but-wrong vehicles like the Camrolla?

I believe TTAC’s job is to provide a forum for the truth, just like the name says.

Actually, most of the cars here aren’t bad machines. Isn’t the purpose of sites like TTAC to try and steer people away from popular-but-wrong vehicles like the Camrolla?

As a design exercise, I still like the Prowler.

Take a truck engine and install it into a barely refined chassis, WOW big freaking deal!

The measure of Success for any mass-market company are products that actually generate VOLUME sales.

Hell, any auto exec can redirect limited and necesssary fund from the REAL projects into a psuedo-exotic that will sell to the crowd that could careless about long term quality. In other words the Viper is NOT a “real-world” car.

Put the Viper into context, like comparing it to a refined sportscar like a Porsche and the story quickly changes.

After taking part in the creation of the most successful performance sedan line in history of the world maybe he figures he doesn’t need to create successful cars that people buy anymore.

A more sinister possibility, given that he’s Swiss, and “Among other aircraft, he owns and pilots a Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet in German Luftwaffe colors”, is that he’s a double agent and trying to undermine the American automobile industry for the benefit of the Germans.

On a side note: One time I was going into a Safeway in Seattle and, parked w/in a few spots of each other, were an XR4Ti, a Delorean & a Sterling 827. Needless to say, I took my business elsewhere…no need to shop for Cocoa Puffs in Bizaro World.

Ooooh, boy…

“All of our stuff is American made,
It’s a little cheesy, but it’s nicely displayed.
We don’t get exited when it crumbles and breaks,
We just get on the phone and call up some flakes.”

Lutz is a flake. A snow haired flake. He has snowed consumers and share holders to make himself rich. And now he is going to snow the taxpayers of the USA on a car he knows will never be sold, the Volt.

I’m not sure if Lutz should be praised for trying to champion the rear wheel drive manual transmission layout or chastised for, through failed, poorly positioned, under developed niche models like the XR4Ti, Solstice and GTO, making the big three loose faith in that layout.

I tend to err on the side of the later.

Rick Wagoner?