Driving a cartoonist's fantasy

The Dodge Viper GTS is the ultimate power tool

Its design flaunts anything in autodom. Big, bulging fenders with wheels that look like they belong on some kind of eighteen-wheeler, they're so big. The windows are tiny, pinched portholes through which you can see barely anything, and two big exhaust pipes poke out of the car's defiantly hiked rear end. The car's profile is almost too expressive, bulging just a little too much in all the right places, sort of like Jessica Rabbit. Cool little cartoony details abound, from the polished-aluminum fuel filler cap to the buttons that release the doors electrically.

The Dodge Viper GTS&emdash;the so-called "grand touring" version of Chrysler's overblown and outrageous RT/10 roadster isn't my cup of tea, but it has no problem at all living up to the expectations engendered by its rough-and-ready looks. Cartoonishness aside, it's a wonderful performance car that only gets better the faster you go.

Simply starting the car up fulfills most of those adolescent automotive fantasies we've all at one time or another felt. After a key twist&emdash;and the flicking of a big metal switch underneath one of those James-Bond-style flip-up red missile lanucher covers&emdash;the entire car rumbles to life. It's as if the thing were alive. The engine, a huge 8-liter V-10 originally destined for (and used in) trucks, shakes the car's entire plastic body along with it, throbbing with every turn of the crankshaft. You rock gently in the wide leather seat. Despite the extra sound deadening in this version, the rumble is still enough to drown out the stereo.

It only gets scarier as you get underway, the engine crackling and popping while you putter along. For the most part, puttering along is what you should do unti; you're used to the thing; launching the Viper without inducing wheelspin&emdash;especially in first&emdash;is something that takes a lot of practice. Give it a lot of gas, and it will spin the wheels all the way through first, second, and even third. (A colleague of mine joked that the proper way to do it was to start in fourth and then downshift to second&emdash;it's much to the car's credit that not only does this tactic work, but that the car remains completely smooth while doing so.) Dropping the clutch at around 2000 rpm seems to work best; you get a bit of a chirp&emdash;

And then you're off. It's barely a couple of seconds before you're slamming the lever into second, and hanging on for dear life. 100 km/h flies by in an impossible four seconds, and the quarter-mile mark can be reached in 12 seconds without much effort, the car roaring and rumbling around you. Just keep your foot in it, and hang on for dear life.

If you're able to hold on to yourself and your bladder past the quarter-mile mark, by which time you're travelling at 180 or so, the Viper suddenly becomes a lot less unruly, a lot less violent, and a whole lot more fun to drive. The steering lightens up significantly, and the huge tires mean that you can carve through a corner at pretty much any speed you like&emdash;after a couple of practice laps around Putnam Park road course in Indiana, I was lapping in fourth gear where most cars I had driven would stay in second and third all the way around.

Come to think of it, taking a road course in a higher gear is probably the advisable thing to do. With all of the V-10's low-end grunt (450 bhp and 550+ lb-ft of torque), and the Viper's lack of any kind of traction control, it would probably be all too easy to spin off into the weeds by gassing it too much in a corner. Power oversteer is fun, of course, and the Viper is more controllable than most, but it's not something you want to do at such high speeds in a car that doesn't belong to you. (Buy the car, then buy a track.)

That you don't have to switch gears all that often is definitely a boon. The Viper's 6 speed gearbox, designed to handle all of the torque that it does, is linked to a heavy clutch and clonks through the gears in a very nonchalant and imprecise fashion. The shifts aren't easy, either, because first, third and fifth are offset to the left from second, fourth and sixth. (Thankfully, the clutch&emdash;like all of the pedals&emdash;is at least adjustable for height and reach, something that I discovered right away that I needed to do.)

At high speeds, all of the twitchiness leaves the Viper, and it seems a helluva lot more planted than it does on normal roads. Perhaps an effect of all of the wind and road noise simply masking all that's wrong with the car, perhaps an effect of the driver's concentration, this is one of the few cars I've driven that feels really good when going at speeds double, nay, triple, most speed limits.

Off the track and around town, the situation is inevitably worse. On anything but a perfectly paved road, the huge Michelin Pilots want to follow every rut and gauge in the asphalt, making steering a straight line a handful for even the most attentive driver. Over bumps the entire body creaks and groans&emdash;not that it isn't stiff, but the fiberglass shell isn't particularly well bolted down or anything. Seeing out of the cockpit through windows I could cover by putting my hands together is difficult to say th least. The engine shakes and shudders like a truck engine should, its exhaust note incredibly agricultural-sounding, so much worse than when it's spinning at speed. At idle, it harrumphs and sputters, constantly requiring that you give it some gas&emdash;something that will earn you no friends in a nice, quiet neighborhood.

Worst of all, when driving even at the most moderate pace, the car uses enough gas that you can almost see the gauge moving from F to E as you tool around town. The Viper was by far the biggest drain on my pocketbook of any media vehicle I've driven thus far; I spent nearly two hundred bucks in just one week keeping it fueled.

Having said that, at this price point, who really cares? If you can afford the ninety grand or so to put yourself in one of these things, you'll more than likely be able to afford to keep yourself in it. Besides, it's regular gas that the GTS uses, not premium, which is a small consolation.

And that ninety grand sure buys a lot of attention. You get more stares than any car on the road; leave the car in a parking lot for just a few minutes, and when you return, you're sure to have a crowd around it. Kids of all ages want to have their pictures taken in it&emdash;just make sure that if they want to sit in the driver's seat, they don't have the keys.

Which is, I guess, what the Viper is all about in the end. It is a way for us&emdash;or at least, those of us who can afford it&emdash;to indulge our adolescent fantasies. To drive the car that we saw back in those cartoons of yore. To blast down a dragstrip as fast as we've always dreamed. To brag about going 300 km/h, and having the pictures to prove it. To burn thousands of dollars worth of rubber just by giving the gas pedal a little tap. To&emdash;dare I say this&emdash;impress the girls. Taken on that level, the Viper is a wondrous, towering success, and a testament to how much Chrysler is willing to indulge its designers and engineers, to keep them on the cutting edge, even if it's the cutting edge of Speed Racer or Captain America.

Do I want one? Absolutely not. Do I love it? Oh yes. Did I impress the girls? Not unless you count the woman whose eight-year-old grandkid had dragged her across the Wawa lot and wanted her to buy him one. But on a brief drive down an interstate, dozens of people were moving out of the left lane at a rate I didn't think possible. That's gotta be worth something.

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