Comments on: Chrysler: Someone Wants To Buy The Viper

By: hal

hal — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 08:20:10 +0000

Thank God cerberus is dismantling Chrysler.
Where are the synergies between making and marketing a low volume exotic like the Viper and building Minivans, SUVs and Trucks? I hope someone with cash to invest buys Viper and builds it into a Ferrari or Porsche competitor.

By: KingElvis

KingElvis — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:44:53 +0000

Thank God Cerberus isn’t dismantling Chrysler and selling it piece by piece the way so many had feared…oh wait. It is.

Woohoo for private equity. Buhbye Chrysler.

By: Mike66Chryslers

Mike66Chryslers — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:28:36 +0000

@chanman: GM doesn’t have cash to throw away on another niche vehicle like that…. which means that it’s entirely possible!

By: chanman

chanman — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:05:14 +0000

Maybe it’s Lutz buying back his baby. Pontiac Viper?

GM always could buy and kill the Viper so the Corvette would be the uncontested American Performance Car, but I think they’d be more likely to try and run with it if they bought it.

By: Usta Bee

Usta Bee — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:03:53 +0000

Maybe Shelby ?.

By: Johnster

Johnster — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:55:12 +0000

It could be similar to how a series of private investors managed to revive Avanti several times after Studebaker bit the dust. It gave Avanti a run of an additional 30 years or so, not counting the Camaro/Firebird-based Avantis, before Avanti finally died.

By: Scottie

Scottie — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:19:06 +0000

Rich Russian Anyone?

By: Ingvar

Ingvar — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:32:17 +0000

Didn’t Ford get almost $1 billion for Aston Martin? Dodge sells not only more cars than AM, but there’s also a bigger opportunity for capitalization within the Viper brand. If Bentley can sell fifteen thousand Continentals a year, then there’s a market for more Vipers. Imagine a Porsche Boxster contender…

By: NickR

NickR — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:28:11 +0000

Chrysler would still be the manufacturer of the V10, I assume.

By: arapaima

arapaima — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:22:21 +0000

Ah the viper, I’ve always had a certain favoritism for the car. It wasn’t for any of the performance numbers, or anything practical like that. The car was just so good looking compared to anything else I had seen

That being said I just hope Chrysler doesn’t sell it to someone who’ll screw up the car. I actually would like whoever buys it to go back to a design like the 2nd gen viper (my personal favorite).

By: ferrarimanf355

ferrarimanf355 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:13:47 +0000

NulloModo:

A Ford-branded Viper makes no sense, but then again, Roush is selling perfornamce parts for the Corvette, so who am I to pass judgement like that?

Personally, I’m rooting for Saleen to strike and get the Viper. Yeah, they’re known for tuning the hell out of Mustangs, but they did build the Bumblebee Camaro for the Transformers film, so it’s not like they’re totally loyal. Besides, the Raptor is a while off, isn’t it?

By: argentla

argentla — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:37:09 +0000

NulloModo:

That’s deranged. I kinda like it.

By: Mike66Chryslers

Mike66Chryslers — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:55:57 +0000

At this point, Chrysler is selling about 80 Vipers per month– which is probably more than a low volume hand-assembler could handle in production.

If production drops and the waiting list gets a little longer, that could be a good thing for maintaining exclusiveness of the car… unless one is worried about potential customers running off to buy a Vette or something else instead.

But presumably the amount of interest would drop when you could no longer get a car with a dealership warranty

Why couldn’t the cars still be sold through Dodge dealerships with a Chrysler warranty? it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing was done.

By: NulloModo

NulloModo — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:41:04 +0000

Ford should buy the brand. With GM about to relaunch the Mustang’s arch-nemesis the Camaro, and the GT out of production, Ford needs an answer to the Corvette. With some re-engineering the Viper (maybe just rename it the Cobra to make it fit better) could compete on price and performance with the Corvette and be a big seller.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:13:15 +0000

I’ll jump off the cliff with Dr Lemming:

The Viper is so irrelevant to the Dodge brand it might as well be sold off (and saved). Even 80 Vipers a month sounds a little high considering the sheer ridiculousness of this car. It’s much crazier than the Corvette, and I’d imagine less of a car you can live with.

If you mention “Dodge” to the average consumer, the models that come back are probably the Ram and the Durango. Goes to show you exactly what Dodge has been pumping out these past years. Selling off the sub-brand is the only way to save it (provided this “secret” buyer isn’t in fantasyland, solely created to give this a publicity bump).

And Robstar – the ACR just bested the ZR1’s Nurburgring time. I’d like to think the performance is right there (for a price).

By: toxicroach

toxicroach — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:56:37 +0000

The Challenger doesn’t have the pop culture chops to be a halo.

By: Dr Lemming

Dr Lemming — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:53:28 +0000

Is the Viper “crucial” to Dodge’s brand image? That strikes me as a debatable point. Certainly the Viper has been an iconic model, but I wonder whether its usefulness to Chrysler has passed. Times have changed. Brute power has less appeal.

At any rate, if Ford can do just fine with the Mustang as its halo sporty car, what’s wrong with Dodge relying upon the Challenger? Whatever else you can say about it, the Challenger at least has much better economies of scale than the Viper.

By: Robstar

Robstar — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:42:05 +0000

I always loved both the viper styling & performance #’s. If I could only afford one & it had a warranty….

IMHO the styling is better than the vette, even if the performance isn’t up there.