It’s that time again. Time for an RFD build your own. Where you and I take a magical, whimsical journey through an automaker’s website imagining what could be. Today we drive SRT, or Dodge, or whatever they call the company that makes the Viper these days. That’s right, you get to build your own Dodge SRT Viper! Perhaps that confusion is keeping people from buying them, sales are way down and that’s sad. There aren’t many other 8.4L V10 powered coupes starting under $100,000. And at just $94,995 the Viper is a good ole fashioned American bargain. Plus they are heavily discounting them from what I hear. So if you want supercar looks and performance at, well not-so-inexpensive-but-cheaper-than-most-price, the Viper may be for you. But how do you option such a beast. Let’s go look. First, let’s take a look at the interface.
It’s not bad, everything is on the same page. You click through various elements on the left bar which changes what you see across the bottom.
It was time to choose a color and, while I think it’s cool that you can pick any tone or hue or bring your own RGB color number to a dealer and order what you want, I kept things simple. I’ve always had a thing for the old blue GTS with the white stripes. The closest thing is “GTS-R blue” which is a fairly dark blue and didn’t look quite interesting enough for me. So “Competition Blue” it is.
Pretty snazzy, but this snake needs some stripes. Before you paint your Viper, you need to decide which hood you want. That blue one in the back will do. Apparently that’s the “SRT hood”. Well this is an SRT, so that makes sense, sold. Wait, how much is it? They don’t tell you. Hmm, oh well, back to fantasyland. Time to buy some stripes. Again I can pick just about any shade of paint I want. How about…white? Done.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Well, getting somewhere a bit slowly. You see that little “image quality” button up towards the top right? Keep that at high or better and each click will take 5-6 seconds to re-render your Viper. At least via my internet connection, which shouldn’t be benchmarked by anyone not using AOL.
Time for packages! I love packages. Not in that way sicko, it just means that all of my favorite kit will be wrapped up nicely for me for one low price. Let’s see what we’ve got.
Well there are the TA Packages, 1.0 and 2.0. And the second is twice as big as the first, let’s go big. Whoa, that’s a big wing. What else am I getting?
TA 2.0 Package
- Sabelt Black Performance Cloth Seats with either Orange or Y’Orange Accent Stitching
- TA Serialized IP Badge & Decals
- SRT Hood
- 5 Mode Electronic Stability Control
- Lower Dive Planes
- TA Front Splitter
- Carbon Fiber Rear Applique
- Carbon Fiber Structural X-Brace
- TA Aero Wing Assembly Kit
- Pirelli P Zero Corsa High Performance Tires
- Sidewinder II Matte Wheels (or substitute for any wheels)
- Black Brembo Calipers with Orange writing (no substitutions)
- Time Attack Suspension
- Track Car Cover
Hmm, not sure I’m up for such an extreme option, this will be my daily driver after all.
What if I dial it back a bit? Rather than just clicking 1.0, I have to unselect 2.0 and then select 1.0. Lap time, 10 seconds. What does this get me?
TA 1.0 Package
- Sabelt Black Performance Cloth Seats with either Orange or Y’Orange Accent Stitching
- TA Serialized IP Badge & Decals
- SRT Hood
- 5 Mode Electronic Stability Control
- Carbon Fiber Front Splitter
- Carbon Fiber Rear Spoiler
- Carbon Fiber Rear Applique
- Carbon Fiber Structural X-Brace
- Pirelli P Zero Corsa High Performance Tires
- Sidewinder Matte Black Wheels (or substitute any wheels)
- Black Brembo Calipers with Orange writing (no substitutions)
- Time Attack Suspension
- Car Cover
Wait, isn’t that the same stuff? Oh well, I like it better than the 2.0 option so I’ll keep it. It’s a bit more “subtle” at least “Viper-subtle”, so it won’t look quite so track-geeky when I pull up at the valet.
On to the interior. My fancy TA package limits me to certain options inside and I can have any seating material I want as long as its Black Nappa Leather/Alcantara Suede Seats, which I like, or Black Cloth Seats with Orange stitching. No. I would post an image of the interior, but the image got all wonky. Oh well the hell, I’ll post it anyway. If you zoom in, take a look at the odd angles and lines, thought it was a Lamborghini-designed exterior at first.
The rest of the interior option list was fairly mundane, some red seat belts (which would clash with the orange stitching and brakes), carbon fiber “accents”, or a Harmon Kardon 18-speaker stereo. That sounds heavy, and I hope to only listen to the V10 wail now that the Viper sounds more like a race car and less like a UPS truck (if you heard the early-day Vipers, you know what I’m talking about). Let’s get out of interior-land, tis a silly place.
Time to choose some wheel….awww SONOFABITCH! Someone jacked a headlight from my Viper? I haven’t even bought it yet.
Clearly either Dodge could tell I was poking fun at it’s configurator (I actually have enjoyed it thus far) or my internet connection just failed to download the proper 1s and 0s to form a Viper headlight. I would choose some wheels but the TA package did it for me. And they’re pretty badass. Same goes for the Pirelli tires.
So I don’t go out on a low note with my ghetto Viper above, here are some of the glamour shots they give you as a parting gift showing your Viper doing all kind of cool stuff on the open road, in tunnels, or drifting. Pretty cool actually.
At this point I was going to post a bunch of wacky color combinations. But somehow, as if the Dodge configurator knew I was up to no good, it just spun. And spun. And spun. Thus the pink Susan G. Komen pink Viper tribute for charity will not happen. See below, see my notes are in red. As of the posting of this article, it was still spinning.
There isn’t nearly enough tire smoke in the drift preview image.