I could sit here and waffle on about dynamics and braking distances and performance figures but, frankly, I’d be wasting everybody’s time. You can tell by looking at the Viper Coupé that it’s loud, obnoxious and fast, so there’s really no point me stating the obvious. Instead, I’m going use this space to tell you some of the things you could do with a Viper Coupé, apart from driving around in it looking like a bit of a plonker. Get Arrested Surprisingly hard thing to do in a Viper Coupé, unless you actually drive over a policeman’s dog with it, while he’s walking it. Most coppers just want to talk about the car usually let you off with a caution. Speed would be the obvious choice but with a top speed beyond 300 km/h that’s about as hard as falling off a log and about as imaginative as my choice of clichés. No, to really make the local headlines, you need to be up to something truly maggoty, like doing doughnuts outside the local Greenpeace office or creating a riot outside your local shopping centre by offering to give away your €200,000 Viper to the first person who can bring you four real teeth. Fortunately, you can reach 100 km/h in 4 seconds dead so you’ll be away before a winner emerges, though you should expect a white, hubcap-less Mondeo outside your gates within the hour. Remember, that coin’s glued to the floor so just let it be.
Getting laid is a surprisingly hard thing to do in a Viper Coupé because nothing says ‘over-compensation ’like three miles of bright, red bonnet. The trick here is to convince your potential beau that you’re not a raving egomaniac and that you have the papal restraint needed to put it in 6th gear and amble along at the posted speed limit even if the car is on the verge of cutting out. You also need to open the door for her and warn her not to bump her head because now that the Viper has a roof and sits half an inch off the ground, that’s an easy thing to do. Of course, it’ll all go to pieces when you chase down the squirt in the Corsa that undertook you while you were singing her a love song but hey, the night is young and there’s always Lilly’s. Get Revenge Surprisingly easy thing to do in a Viper Coupé. Wait for a wet day and then approach your nemesis with an offer to bury the proverbial hatchet. After a long chat about where it all went wrong, offer your new ‘mate’ the keys to your Viper for a quick spin. Overcome by your generosity and afraid to rebuke you for fear of restarting your personal cold war, your arch-rival will happily jump behind the wheel for a quick jaunt. For fun, tell him that the button on the dash marked ‘TCS’ is the traction control and by no means should he touch it. Then bang the roof, encourage him to ‘open her up’ and send him on his way. Of course, no such button exists because the Viper has no semblance of electronic driving aids, so you may as well call a taxi right now because your car is not coming back. On his best day, even Schumacher would struggle with 500 bhp and 712 NM of torque on a mucky Irish roundabout.
Get Lost Now this is something that would only be fun in a Viper Coupé. Picture the scene: There’s a ‘ould farmer shovelling shite out ‘the back d’tractor when you roll up in your wheeled missile asking for directions to Ballydehobbery. Fifty bonus points if he asks ‘What kind of a ting is dat?’ and if the word diesel passes his lips or you can make him say ‘Fiper’,that’s an automatic 1000 points. Later, you could find yourself a rural secondary school and inadvertently give all the students a half-day by parking it in the middle of playground just before lunch and not leaving. You’ll make the Ballydehobbery Times front page if you can get the spinster head mistress to go for a spin with you, cementing your newfound, God-like status amongst these excitement-starved teens.
Get Your Arse Out OK,I should point out that this isn’t actually a difficult thing to do at all, if you unplug your brain and put a cement block in your right shoe. The tough part is doing it without taking someone’s house with you. The Viper is a surprisingly well-balanced (almost 50:50 weight distribution in fact) and sensitive driver’s car but it has more power than Stalin in his prime, and because of that Dodge has bolted on tyres so big you could cut one in half and use it as a canoe. You have to overcome that massive grip with just the right amount of throttle and that, l let me tell you, is a lot tougher than it sounds. Too much and you’re spinning like a ballerina, too little and you’ll break into understeer and nose-dive into a field. The real challenge is finding somewhere to do it. You need a paved area the size of Leitrim to find the Viper’s limits without stuffing it and if you think the local car park is an option then forget it. You’ll end up buried in the front window of the neighbourhood Centra and no Garda’s going to believe that your kilometre-long, spiralling skid mark was the result of a ‘mishap’.
Get Serious Alright, I’d better tell you what’s so new in the Viper Coupé. Mechanically, it’s every bit as daft as the convertible but the bodywork has been beefed up around the rear haunches and because of the improvement in aerodynamics it’ll go even faster. The double-bubble roof design means there’s now room to wear helmet which I would recommend even if you’re just looking at it – and there’s a proper boot now, too, which you can fill with spare underpants and bail money.
Get yourself to the Gym You need to be fit for a number of reasons. For a start, the pedals are very tightly packed together and kinda stiff, so you need to work on leg and foot strength if you don’t want to end up gibbering in the car park of Tesco’s without the strength left to pull yourself out. While you’re are at it, do some long-distance training because the only parking spots that you’ll fit into will be the five empty ones on the other end of the car park. You’re also going to need considerable strength and endurance in your arms so you can shift those hefty gears while sawing away at that meaty wheel trying to keep it going in a straight line. It also takes strong abs to climb in and out of that narrow door aperture and they’ll also help you stomach the gargantuan running costs. Finally work on those glutes because buttocks clenching seems to be a part of every journey in the Viper Coupe.
Get Glasses They’re left-hand-drive only and the width of a cruise liner so you’d better make sure your spatial awareness is spot on and you know how to find the edge of the road without going off. Overtaking is particularly challenging as you have to put a lot of car into oncoming traffic before you can see what’s coming against you. You’ll also need those glasses to help you read the bus timetable because, let’s face it, your licence isn’t going to last more than a lunar month.
Get one surprisingly, you can actually get your hands on a Viper in Ireland, you mad bastard. They’re officially on sale in the UK through Chrysler dealerships and you could actually go to your local dealership and order one if you wanted, though you may have to actually convince them of that fact. You should be able to have one taxed and on the road for two hundred grand, we reckon. I can’t guarantee you’ll be around in twelve months to talk about the experience, but I can promise you that whatever your fate, you’ll be smiling all the way to the end. The Dodge Viper Coupé is the most preposterous way of going stupidly fast that you’ll find anywhere on this planet and regardless of whether I look silly in it or not, just love it.
INFO
Dodge Viper SRT 10 Coupé
Engine: 8,277 V10, 500bhp,
712Nm torque
Boot Capacity: 176 litres
Acceleration: 0-100km/h 4.0 secs
Top speed: 305 km/h
Price: €200,000 (est)
Transmission: Six-speed manual, rearwheel drive
Economy: 20 litres/100km (CBG average)
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