Attempted Viper Buyout Likely Occurred Before Chrysler's Bankruptcy

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems
We know that Chrysler put its Viper operations up for grabs as the company — and country — spiraled into economic disaster back in 2008, but the date of the V10-powered sports car’s near-salvation at the hands of investors is hazy.James Glickenhaus, the actor, economic adviser and small-batch supercar builder, told TTAC’s Ronnie Schreiber that a group of buyers almost saved the Viper and its Detroit assembly plant, but the deal fell through. Which is why the Viper is going away, right about….now.But Glickenhaus left out a key detail of his recollection — the date.“A private group wanted to buy Viper and approached FCA who were receptive. This private group asked me for advice and I gave it to them,” Glickenhaus told TTAC. He added that he advised against the plan (which he describes as taking place several years ago), and the would-be deal ultimately went nowhere.Glickenhaus can’t recall exactly when the wealthy investors approached the automaker, but Road & Track believes it was between the 2008 Viper offering and the company’s 2009 bankruptcy. That means the proposed deal wasn’t with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, but Cerberus, then-owner of Chrysler LLC.Glickenhaus told R&T that the group had the cash to back up any deal. “They were a bunch of enthusiasts and they thought there was value in the Viper name, the plant, and [the car itself],” he said.Why didn’t Glickenhaus approve of the deal? “I thought that car was pretty tired, and it needed a revamping,” he told R&T. “They would have come up with a better car . . . [but] they’d be spending a lot of money to do it.”At the time of Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy filing, the automaker claimed there wasn’t much interest in the Viper. Court documents later revealed that wasn’t the case. At least two groups approached Chrysler before May, 2009, but that’s ancient history now.After the limited-edition 2017s leave the factory, it’s lights out for a model introduced by Lee Iacocca a quarter century ago. Three corporate makeovers since Iacocca told Bob Lutz to “Go build the damn thing, will ya?”, the company wants nothing to do with its halo car.
Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • SCE to AUX SCE to AUX on Aug 05, 2016

    “They would have come up with a better car . . . [but] they’d be spending a lot of money to do it.” This is exactly what I suspected. Sometimes the blind squirrel gets the nut. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/08/exclusive-group-investors-attempted-buy-dodge-viper-tooling-assembly-facility/#comment-8159618 It's not today's Viper that matters; it's tomorrow's.

  • Boxerman Boxerman on Aug 05, 2016

    The chasis and suspension of the curent viper is by alla counts pretty excellent, the bodywork is easily changed as its plastic cladding. What really holds the car back imo is the engine. Not the power thats ecellent, but it sounds like a vacum cleaner fart, and its simply not exotic. Within the scale of doing things "inexpesively" a viper with a ryan falocner pushrod v12 for under 150k would be an extremly compelling car. Maybe there is a group to buy viper now, we know sergio is a seller.

  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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