7/10 in a viper is crazy fast. The natural tendency of roads is that they’re only curvy around obstacles like trees or edges of cliffs, with plenty of blind corners. These are not great areas to be going much faster than 60-70mph given normal human reaction times, and especially without electronic aids.

Also, assuming sane non-r tires, more power only becomes useful around higher speeds, 100+, where any kind of incident becomes potentially deadly without a roll cage, etc.

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Afterall, wouldn’t it be a boring World if a Miata was the highest performance car ‘for the street’?

Somewhat sad, but true. The reason is that car performance keeps evolving, but the average driver has not. Even the base miata nowadays is quite fast, and it hasn’t even gone berzerk like 250+ hp family saloon v6’s.

BTW #1 – I agree with your point if you live in a congested city. I don’t.

BTW #2 – The only reason I linked ‘those’ videos is because we were debating straight line acceleration. There’s plenty of videos out there with Viper taking corners, etc…

There’s a reason why even that lowly M in bmw’s stand for motorsport. These cars simply cannot be driven appropriately on surface streets. What do you think those idiots in the videos you linked above were doing?

Then, if you’re going to buy a race car, why not just buy a real race car with that kind of money. The only honest answer is that these bozos can’t drive worth a damn, but desire expensive male enhancement.

Ok, to be fair, I like hooning as much as the next guy, but proper hooning comes from attitude instead of equipment.

Huh??? Have you ever driven a Viper? My guess is no… Otherwise you would know they are MUCH MORE than just ‘highway racers’? The new ACR set the WORLD RECORD for a production car at the ‘Ring. IN FOUR LAPS AND ONE AFTERNOON!!! And the base model isn’t far behind. INCREDIBLE brakes & traction are standard issue. Even TT cars are very streetable if tuned properly. There is ZERO lag with any proper FI Viper, so it’s just a matter of ‘tuning the boost’ to suit your situation. That’s the beauty of high-displacement TT engines. You can go from ‘mild’ low boost streetable car, to ‘crazy’ high boost levels for straight line events. When I say crazy, some are known to approach 2,000 HP. Yes, that’s a two.

As far as any car I’ve driven, and I’ve driven a lot, no car gets the adrenaline pumping like the Viper. Does it compare to base jumping off Sears Tower? I suspect not. You’d probably need a Pro Modified car to pull that off. On the other hand, a Top Fuel car makes base jumping look like checkers.

Those who needs cars like this explained to them will never understand them.

On the other hand, some things are just dumb. A viper, never mind a TT one, as a street car is essentially worthless except for highway racing. For a pure adrenaline rush, many extreme “sports” are far more stimulating for much less cost. It’s not really an exotic, and you can get a more elemental drive in a roadster or any motorcycle, not to mention look less like a jerkoff highway racer to people who know better.

From the little reseach I did (basically just looking on their site), they fabricate the frame, and then piece the bike together using aftermarket parts or outsource custom fabrication. The engine is ordered directly from the GM performance parts catalogue. A custom 2-speed tranny is used, which I believe another shop assembles. The rear-end is a 7.5 inch Ford. Custom frame, Chevy V8 car engine, remanufactured custom GM tranny, Ford 7.5 rear/used housing, misc. parts from aftermarket catalogues or custom fabricators. ‘Franken-bike’? You decide…. I don’t think BossHoss would take offense to that name. Actually, I think that’s part of the charm.

I must admit the final product is pretty impressive. I’ve seen a few at Bike Week (Daytona Beach mid 90’s), so I know they’re street legal. Basically a rocket sled… Hold on for dear life!!! Heck, your talking +/- 500HP at a little over 1000 pounds! That’s insane! BTW – These things are not cheap. $40,000 – $60,000++ from what I remember…

So what, I can sit on a skateboard with a Saturn V rocket up my ass and…

What’s ironic is the ultimate bike (of this sort) housed a Viper motor. We’ve come full circle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtlLmz11uc0

http://www.werentmotorcycles.com/Site/502_Boss_Hoss_Motorcycle_Rental.html

8.3L, 502hp, 567 lb-ft of torque in 1100 pound vehicle.

http://hubpages.com/hub/_Nothing_Exceeds_Like_Excess_Boss_Hoss

I don’t think they make the 502 anymore but they still make bikes w/ 445 lb-ft of torque…

http://www.bosshoss.com/products.asp

http://www.bosshoss.com/view_bike.asp?x=BHC3LS3SS

Supra guys would probably beg to differ. Course, they are Supra guys, hence they might actually be right.

I agree with your assessment. For power-to-weight ratios, I can’t think of a car that comes close to a 500hp Hayabusa. To get a McLaren F1 to a similiar p/w ratio, it would have in excess of 2000hp!

There are some caveats at work though. The big barrier for bikes to go faster isn’t power, its keeping the front wheel down and the back wheel from just spinning out. Note the Busa driver popping wheelies accelerating through 150MPH; pretty cool, but also a waste of power, frankly.

Torque does make things feel faster. Diesels are weird that way…its like they can idle out to sixty faster than if you try to step on the gas. I remember having a rental Prius in Colorado once, and that car actually felt kinda quick up to thirty or so, purely because electric motors have so much twist.

Why do you compare this tuned car to a stock motorcycle?
Compare it to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNJMlFnZTo

Again, you are going outside the context of the review. I think most people with motorcycle experience are comparing it to THIS viper, not some/random/pimped/out/viper.

That’s a very good point. A lot of what these cars are about is showing them off, obviously. You can take a date out on the town or a country-drive in a Busa to be sure, but its gonna be a certain type of girl…definitely not an experience for everyone. I think that’s one of the reasons you don’t see the Ferrari Enzo being a single-seater for instance, or with in-line seating, even though the drag coefficient would improve dramatically from such a design. The “no holds barred” philosophy stops when compromising the ability to pick up the ladies is involved.

I think also that’s one of the reasons the McLaren F1 is remembered fondly by gearheads, but isn’t so much of a pin-up car like Ferraris or Lambos. Sitting in the center, with a date stuffed in one of the side-seats, not quite as sexy (now driving in the center with TWO dates – one on either side – P-Diddy video in there somewheres!).

I’ve only rode a zx-9 once and my daily rider is a gsx-r 600.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0P6JaDlXXk&feature=related

*No longer the record (I don’t think), but cool vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBEeo6l3a6s&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvikm7S1ouI

After this car destroyed many stock Busa’s it raced a Turbo Busa:

http://www.streetcarforums.com/videos/JUDGEMENT%20DAY%202HR.wmv

For the record, I’m happy to have the bike-v-car discussion… as was noted above, I invited it.

JEC and stevenm are saying about what I’m saying. The Viper pulls hard from anywhere on the dial, period, point blank, and it doesn’t face an aero wall the way bikes do.

In the infamous “80-150 roll”, both Viper and bike would be in the proper gear and the acceleration would be similar. The difference is that the Viper delivers big pull at all times. Thus my comment, which I will stand behind. There is no production sportbike that will deliver twist from middle revs like this Viper.

For the record, I’ve had an “M” endorsement since 1994 and have ridden many of the big-hitter bikes, including the first-gen Hayabusa and the old ZX-11 but not the current ZX-14. I am not a motorcycle racer, although I’d like to be, so I don’t review bikes for TTAC or anywhere else, but I can ride them and I can wave a knee in the general direction of the pavement.

Another thing that makes a difference: It’s possible to explore a major portion of the Viper’s performance envelope with a passenger aboard, in the rain, under varying conditions, and so on. Modern sportbikes are single-purpose machines.

As always, thanks to everybody for reading.

My Suzuki TL1000S (arguably the Viper of the sport bike world – at least one journalist died when reviewing it upon its release in 1997), can pull off mid-high 10’s in the quarter and 0-60 in under 3.5 seconds. Top speed, on the other hand, at 160 MPH is not exactly exotic by sports car standards.

The driving experience – and skill required, IMHO – are apples to oranges. Whereas in a car your wallet is usually the limiting factor to how fast you can go, on a bike it’s your skills. A bike involves you more physically: no power assist on anything, shifting your ass around on the bike to redistribute weight. Personally, I think I could get around a road course faster in a stock Miata than a top-tier sportbike. And have a grin on my face after doing either.

Most four-cyl sportbikes nowadays are tuned almost exclusively for top end power (horsepower wars have been waged for decades, with the big four Japanese manufacturers touting single-digit one-upsmanship).

But there are some bikes that have the any-gear-any-revs shove that rivals a tuned car. Just not all of them. The torque/power masters are generally the supersporttouring rides (Busa, ZX12/14 for example. Big bikes with big engines and big power figures, not lithe full on sport bikes). And in high speed roll-ons, bikes usually lose to big-power cars – they have poor aerodynamics and narrow power bands working against them.

But do no be deceived. Any sporty bike is mind-alteringly fast to the average car driver. Your perception of “fast” and “the time space continuum” is seriously altered when you ride sport bikes.

I grew bold, I grew bold
I drove my Viper faster and faster till it rolled…

http://www.bartelby.net/198/1.html

In fact it is true. Bikes, even very fast ones, do not respond anything like a Viper, much less a supercharged one. They have small, short-stroke, rev happy engines, and rolling on the throttle at two or three thousand revs does little more than produce more noise. Drop a gear (or two) and get it into the power band, and yes, you go fast. However, the experience is entirely different from mashing on the loud pedal of something with an engine that is eight times larger than your average bike. That, I believe, was the point.

I’ve been riding bikes for a decade and a half. Quick ones. The suggestion that “any monkey” can properly launch a “modern sport bike” and achieve a 3-second 0-60 is patently nonsense, unless “any monkey” is taken to mean “any monkey who has spent several years drag racing bikes and learning how to launch one”. Not that it has any direct correlation to the subject matter at hand.