The Dodge Viper will be one of those cars that didn’t sell so well when it was available, but will be remembered fondly in the future, especially once the robots take over our roads. It’s about to be discontinued, but there’s one last sliver of good news: Dodge will soon reopen the order books for the last batch of 2017 Vipers, one final time.
Tim Kuniskis, head of Fiat Chrysler North America’S passenger car brands, spoke with The Detroit News about having to pause Viper production due to parts and suppliers and the unexpected demand of the track-ready Viper ACR.
Orders for the ACR closed on September, 27th, while regular Viper orders closed on October 7th.
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“We actually had to shut down the ordering because we outran our headlights…We didn’t know if we were going to have enough parts to build all the cars that people ordered.”
Then Dodge also ran out of carbon-fiber wings for the ACR and several nearly completed cars had to sit stagnant at the factory waiting on the aero parts.
“The demand for ACR is off the charts — way more than we ever expected…We are close to opening it back up now that we know how many more we can build…They will sell out quickly.”
But! Now that the supplier issues have been ironed out, the orders will reopen for the last run of 2017 models before the end of the year. There is no indication on exactly how many Vipers will be built, but one dealer has already placed an order for 135 of them. Some of those cars will be built using Dodge’s one-of-one program and will be totally unique.
Since starting production in 1994 Dodge has sold about 30,000 Vipers, but only managed to find customers for 447 Vipers this year. If you have ever wanted to have a brand new V10 snake to scare your neighbors, Kuniskis says “Now it’s really last call.”
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