1996 Dodge Viper RT/10 Looks to the Future

From the December 1995 issue of Car and Driver.

The Viper is the New Chrysler Cor­poration’s attempt at atonement, at making up for the sins it committed against cars—all those bogus wire wheel covers and limp shock absorbers and padded-vinyl roofs—during the reign of Lee the Imperious. And by the precise calculations of our test department, each Viper built since the 1992 intro cancels out 817 K-car New Yorkers.

A lot of “nice” Chryslers were inflicted on the market in those years (more than it could stand, in fact), but the Viper goes about the work of offsetting them with a swaggering gusto. There’s not a nice fiber in its glass body. It’s so ornery it won’t even cancel its own turn signals. “Knife-in-the-back handling,” we said in our last test (“The Supercar Olympics,” July 1995). “Big, crude, deafening, and something of a cartoon,” we said. “Villainous.” (We don’t hold back once we get the adjectives flowing.)

Now we learn that particular Viper was having a bad suspension day—month, actually—during our last test. Wheel alignment was way wrong. High-grip tires don’t like being pointed in contradictory directions. For the record, when we phoned Chrysler before the test to say the suspension had passed through indepen­dent and was well on its way to defiant, we were told: “They’re all like that.”

Anyway, that was then and this is 1996 and the Viper has undergone, for the new year, its first change of underwear since its 1992 introduction. It has a new frame, new suspension, new tires and, what it really needed all along, more horsepower. Surely the New Yorker cancellation rate will be much enhanced by such extensive reengi­neering. Knowing how you care about such things, we set up an all-Viper com­parison—the exact same test car of last summer, fresh from alignment therapy, versus a pre-production 1996 model.

It’s easy to spot the model-year differ­ences on the outside. There are no side exhausts on the new car, racing stripes now appear on both white and black cars, and wheels are different—they’re painted an astonishing yellow on red cars. Inside, the black cockpits are spiced up with vividly colored leather on the wheel rim, shift knob, and brake handle—it’s bright blue on white cars, lipstick-red on red cars. “I won’t go into the politics on that,” said engineer Pete Gladysz, who is chassis and design manager on the Viper Project.

From the driver’s seat, it’s easy to spot differences, too. The new car’s ride is less punishing, the cockpit is much quieter now that exhaust goes out behind, the steering doesn’t squirm as much on truck-worn pavement, and the brake feel is more con­ventional—it’s very good too, thanks to Chrysler ending its infatua­tion with a quirky booster that gave remarkably short pedal travel instead of good modu­lation. “We thought it felt like a Ferrari F40,” Gladysz explains.

Gladysz says most of the 1996 changes were made in anticipation of future model needs and to comply with reg­ulations. The first of the future models is the coupe, due in late spring. Inevitably, it will be heavier. So the engineers went looking for offsetting weight reductions to build into the basic car, and they found enough to lighten the roadster by 90 pounds (our test car, a prototype, is about 60 pounds overweight). Logically, the less drafty, less leaky coupe will encourage driving on colder, wetter days, so new tires were sought. “I didn’t say all-weather tires,” Gladysz reminds.

On the regulatory side, lower noise standards are coming in Europe, and new emissions requirements are coming in the U.S., occasioned by the on-board diag­nostics OBD II rule. For both noise and OBD II, the side exhausts had to go. Everybody wins: the new system pipes the noise far behind the cockpit and away from the occupants’ ears, and it improves the exhaust note while reducing back-pressure. Output rises 15 hp as a result.

Weight reduction also brings gains. The frame loses 60 pounds while improving 20 percent in torsional stiffness. New suspension arms and knuckles are now aluminum, and the wheels are slightly lighter. Together, those changes reduce unsprung weight substantially. Front-sus­pension geometry remains as before, but the rear roll center was lowered to reduce tire scrub—to cut down on self-steering in the truck ruts. At both ends, shocks are new and their attachments were moved closer to the lower ball joints for better control of small suspension movements.

Powertrain changes are numerous as well. Cooling-system capacity is increased, and the clutch, differential, and half-shafts have been upsized for more torque (Gladysz alludes to a future need for this extra beef, without confirming the limited run of high-output Vipers we expect in time for racing season). A power­-steering cooler was added.

Tire sizes remain as before, but the carcass construction, tread pattern, and compound reflect an entirely different approach to performance in these new-to­-the-U.S. Pilot SX Michelins. Contrary to Gladysz’s prediction, we find them slightly less grippy on the skidpad than the Michelin XGT Z tires of the 1995 car on hand for comparison: 0.97 g versus 1.00 g. They seem to understeer more, too—for sure, they require larger steering angles at any given lateral force. And they make a shrill howl at the limit.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the car behaves better on them in every other way. Along with the suspension changes, they vastly improve handling. When cornering at the limit, the new Viper no longer seems balanced on a knife edge. It’s more gradual. The tail now slips into a drift angle. Even with alignment prop­erly set, the 1995 car is still snappish—it’ll bite if you change power or steering imprudently near the limit. The new ver­sion is far more tolerant. You can work with it, make corrections, adjust your path, even as you approach the hairy edge. Proof of this new attitude shows up during hot laps. At the Chrysler proving grounds road course, our man Don Schroeder drove a six-lap ses­sion in each car. His best time in the ’96 was 1:17.47, with a best-­lap-to-worst-lap variation of only 0.08 second. In the old car, he managed one lap in 1:17.32, but the best-to-worst variation exceeded two seconds and cumulative time was far behind. Heard from trackside, the 1995 exhaust at full power hisses like a shot-down blimp, seriously uncool compared with the disci­plined roar of the new one.

On the road, the difference between new and old is no less dramatic. Tire noise on textured roads used to be deafening; now it’s merely excessive (like everything else about the Viper). Ride is much improved too, enough for us to upgrade our rating from the previous “terrible” to “bad.” Perhaps because of the additional frame stiffness, the body is less clattery.

Gladysz says the new tires are signifi­cantly better in braking. Certainly they team happily with the new booster to shorten stopping distances from 177 feet in the realigned ’95 car to 163 feet. Pedal feel is much better too, which is particularly important because the Viper does not offer ABS.

The Viper’s boun­tiful torque “flat”­—the curve, like Nebraska, is flat as far as the eye can see—gives a peculiarly constant acceleration, sort of a civilian substi­tute for a Saturn booster. The extra 15 advertised horses were definitely on the job the day we tested the two cars back-­to-back—0 to 60 mph improves by a tenth of a second to 4.1 seconds, the quarter-mile quickens by a tenth of a second and 1 mph to 12.6 seconds at 113 mph, and top speed rises to 173 mph from 167. A down-to­-weight production car should be slightly quicker.

While the changes for 1996 add up to a more powerful and less belligerent machine, the Viper remains outrageous by intent: the cockpit smells like fiberglass, and its weather protection stows in the trunk. The big hospitality breakthrough for 1996 is sliding-glass technology for the side curtains. That, together with the less obstreperous road behavior, adds up to a better Viper, but no one will confuse it with a “nice” car.