One-Off Mid-Engined Viper

As we are more concerned than ever about the future of the Viper, we thought we might as well take a bit of time to bring back a story that never quite received the attention it deserved back in 2010, when the car this piece describes came to life.

We are talking about a mid-engined Viper that was born some five years ago. While the machine did show up at Viper meets back in 2010 and 2011 and was shown to SRT engineers, it seems that it never made it outside the print media and onto the web.

We could only find a few photos of it, which you can see in the gallery below, as well as some brief info on the Viper Owners Association forums.

With many people pointing their fingers at the first generations of the Viper for being shed-built supercars, the guy who built this took the idea literally.

The contraption features a tubular frame, while at its center we find a Viper ACR-X V10, from the #43 race car that was totaled at Road America.

 

Plenty of parts for the build, powerplant included, came from PartsRack, a specialized Viper bits and pieces website.

The exaggerated dimensions of the car all have to do with accommodating that monster 8.4-liter V10. The thing is said to tip the scales at 1,980 lbs (900 kg), so as you can imagine, it’s a rocket.

As much as we love the current Gen V Viper and we try to analyze the styling of this mid-engined creation through a loving mother’s eyes, the thing still looks wrong from many angles.

Perhaps this comes from the fact that the body was built entirely by hand (the panels are most likely made of fiberglass). And yes, the thing has no doors, with the cockpit opening in a Batmobile-like manner.

The owner of this Mopar mashup has a small collection of Vipers, and rumor has it that none of them is a Gen V. We can only imagine how it feels to enter your garage and come across a line-up whose each member wants to kill you.