@Tossed Accord taco salad over Malibu face: That was meant to be reply to your earlier post, but apparently the commenting system spazzed out for a while and it got put here.
Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier, and appeal to the exact same demographic, to glue 100 dollar bills onto a stock Viper, and finish it off with a couple of coats of Varathane brushed on with a whisk broom?
What's with all these cars debuting at Pebble?? The truly awesome/awful presentations were made Saturday at the Concours d'LeMons. We debuted our "French Legion of Horror" award winning "rear-ended-by-a-Lexus-SUV Citroen DS21". Thanks again to the LeMons staff for the most fun event of the Monterey weekend! (photos to follow later)
How do these coach builders get the styling so wrong so consistently?
The only job they have is to re-do the body. All the hard work is already done. Just draw a nice shape and pay someone to build it and drop it on.
If you quintuple the price of an Enzo you get the P4/5 (of which there is only one and is in fact superior to the original car - dynamically and stylistically).
Quintuple the price of a Viper and you get a mess.
I'm not seeing $400,000 worth of added value, here.
The Viper is plenty powerful enough. Of course, in this venue there is probably no such word as "enough," but in harsh reality there's really a lot more there than you can ever use, unless half your wardrobe is Nomex. And for your Colonial Revival cul de sac that could've been, what do you get? A few extra ponies, good. Body kit, meh. The requisite gigantic wheels and tires, maybe meh. But is it worth what you paid?
Well, no. For $500,000, you could've had an unmolested Viper, and a nice Colonial Revival on a cul de sac. And a garage to keep the car in. And probably a few bucks left over to dig deep and unleash a few extra ponies on your own time. And a raft of entry fees for track days where you can give the horses free rein with no threat of cops.
Dumb idea, and even dumber is the dumbass that buys it.
@Elhigh: That is the best thing I've read in a long time.
It does look good - a lot of TVR Tuscan going on there, which isn't a bad thing in my mind - but for a cool half mill, I would definitely take the $100k sports car and then dump the rest into a nice house and a boat.
@Elhigh: Shit, if a blisteringly-fast Viper is your thing, for $500k you could've had a 1200hp Viper with full-on ACR bodywork and a LeMans-spec suspension.
And it wouldn't look nearly as ugly as this thing.
I quite like it. It's smoother and more modern than a Viper, while simultaneously being very retro. I'm not sure about those fender inserts (or whatever they are), but at least it's different. I would like to see it in a monochromatic paint scheme though, just to get a better feel for the proportions.
[cache.gawker.com]" rel="lytebox" class="commentImage@DrewComments2.0: I agree I like it a lot. It's styling is curvy yet still muscular, exotic yet American. The only thing is the outrageous price. $80k maybe, $500k?!?! crackpipe. Oh and here is my favorite color scheme. I think I like it sans spoiler, though.
@Danimal - doesn't like to comment anymore: (: Oh yeah, the price is total crackpipe, but I like the looks. That wing is a tragedy though, its best view is that smooth sexy rear...
I realize that I'm an odd duck, but I never found the Viper, in any of its iterations, to be an attractive car. I know that the original intent of the designers was to embody the spirit of the old Shelby Cobras, but I think that they tried just a little too hard, and seventeen years later, still haven't quite gotten right.
And this thing....well...it's not any better.
It still strikes me as trying way too hard to be something cool and special, and it shows. It just doesn't work. At least the Viper itself is beginning to gain some sort of acceptance as a result of having been around for seventeen years, but it's still a potent example of what happens when you try to purify some elemental idea so much that you lose sight of what you actually set out to do.
@pauljones: you're not alone in not liking the Viper. I've always found it to be heavy-handed and too in-your-face, when all it really needed was to be simple and sexy (like the Cobra).
@DrewComments2.0: Exactly. The car may be mechanically simple, but design-wise, it's a horrible mess. It's almost funny to put the Viper next to one of it's Corvette contemporaries.
The Viper is like that young buck that drinks a lot, talks a lot, and is always causing bar fights and getting thrown out of places. The Corvette, on the other hand, is like that older guy that sits quietly at the back of the bar because he's kicked so much ass that he has nothing left to prove.
Sure, a lot of people rag on the Corvettes, particularly the C4 Corvette, but even so, Corvettes just plain look cool when placed next to a Viper. They Corvette may not seem as aggressive as the Viper, but it does seem a hell of a lot more confident.
If only they could stick to the same bare-bones philosophy with the aesthetics as the they do with the rest of the car, it might very well be cool.
@Skaycog: A guy like that probably isn't married. He's got a crapload of money and a strange desire for Vipers. My guess is a different girl every couple of months.
@pauljones: I think you're right about the current Viper.
But the original Viper, there was nothing more badass than that. I like curvy, dramatic sports cars (eg: I prefer the C5 to the C6, sorta), and the gen-1 Viper was the best expression of insanity in a rounded package. It had it all - big, long hood, big wheels, scoops and vents that let the sheet metal do the talking.
The Corvette may not have anything to prove, but he's only at the bar to drink his old age away. Next to that old Viper, any contemporary Corvette looks positively plebeian.
@pauljones: In a gunfight between the C6 Vette and the Viper, I hate to say it but the C6 isn't a gun, but a knife.
But as guns go, the Viper is kind of a blunderbuss. It's a significantly better blunderbuss than it was, but still.
And the C6 is one wicked mother of a knife. If you know what you're doing with the one, and the other guy doesn't with the other, it's going to be a short, bloody fight and the guy with the knife wins. By the same token, put two similarly-unskilled drivers in the cars, and the guy in the Vette wins, again. Put two brilliant drivers behind the wheels, and the guy in the Viper wins...provided he doesn't screw up, because the 'Vette is cold death in skilled hands, while the Viper requires skilled hands just to keep it together.
@Elhigh: True, in the hands of experienced drivers, A base Corvette would get its ass kicked. There's just no way around it. And apparently from the reviews I've read, the Z06 can be death on wheels in the hands of an inexperienced driver at full bore. And, finally, the ZR1 was slightly slower than the Viper ACR.
But for overall design maturity, I agree with that the C6 is one wicked mother of a knife.
Not bad looking in an Alfa(ish) kind of way, not sure Devon is the best name for a car,it reminds me crap holidays as a kid & the dodgy old fella from Knight Rider
Step 1: Take Viper and make it uglier; also, instead of naming it after a snake or something similarly bad-ass, give it a vaguely effete, upper-class twit sounding name, like "Devon."
Step 2: Charge 500,000 grand for it.
Step 3: Profit?
Sorry, guys, but I think the MAN-tide is a better execution of an inherently stupid idea.
@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: You're thinking of the wrong Devon. I'm thinking special edition synergies here. Besides, no one's forcing anyone to buy the car. You can still get your plain vanilla Viper if you want.
@Van Sarockin, rogue trebuchet: I was going to mention her. I can't quite see her on an assembly line...being attended to by hundreds of men...each doing their part...getting all sweaty...
You know what, let's flip her over and see if she's got a pentastar on her somewhere. I have my suspicions.
Now them's some hood louvers. Nice coupe variant for the Viper, though the lozenges trailing the wheels are a little odd and disproportionate, especially in contrasting color. Hope he can make a go of this.
@Van Sarockin, rogue trebuchet: Indeed, they should have increased the length of the front two-tone panel, and done away or trimmed back the one on the rear quarter. Nonetheless, still looks better than a Viper to me.
@Ambiguously Unfunny Syrax: The GTR-1 was awesome except for being unable to hop curbs. And I loved the AIV, when I wasn't hitting things (really, just thing - it wasn't durable).
08/17/09
More than meets the eye
Devon GTX
More than meets the eye
Devon GTX
Viper in Disguise
Vipers wage their Battle
To destroy the evil forces
Of the Nissan GT-Rs
Devon GTX
More than meets the eye
Devon GTX
Viper in Disguise
Devon GTX
Vipers wage their Battle
To destroy the evil forces
Of the Nissan GT-Rs
Devon GTX
Devon GTX
Viper in disguise
[Devon GTX]
08/17/09
Dude..
I love u man.
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The only job they have is to re-do the body. All the hard work is already done. Just draw a nice shape and pay someone to build it and drop it on.
If you quintuple the price of an Enzo you get the P4/5 (of which there is only one and is in fact superior to the original car - dynamically and stylistically).
Quintuple the price of a Viper and you get a mess.
08/17/09
The Viper is plenty powerful enough. Of course, in this venue there is probably no such word as "enough," but in harsh reality there's really a lot more there than you can ever use, unless half your wardrobe is Nomex. And for your Colonial Revival cul de sac that could've been, what do you get? A few extra ponies, good. Body kit, meh. The requisite gigantic wheels and tires, maybe meh. But is it worth what you paid?
Well, no. For $500,000, you could've had an unmolested Viper, and a nice Colonial Revival on a cul de sac. And a garage to keep the car in. And probably a few bucks left over to dig deep and unleash a few extra ponies on your own time. And a raft of entry fees for track days where you can give the horses free rein with no threat of cops.
Dumb idea, and even dumber is the dumbass that buys it.
08/17/09
08/17/09
It does look good - a lot of TVR Tuscan going on there, which isn't a bad thing in my mind - but for a cool half mill, I would definitely take the $100k sports car and then dump the rest into a nice house and a boat.
08/17/09
And it wouldn't look nearly as ugly as this thing.
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[cache.gawker.com]" rel="lytebox" class="commentImage@DrewComments2.0: I agree I like it a lot. It's styling is curvy yet still muscular, exotic yet American. The only thing is the outrageous price. $80k maybe, $500k?!?! crackpipe. Oh and here is my favorite color scheme. I think I like it sans spoiler, though.
08/17/09
08/17/09
And this thing....well...it's not any better.
It still strikes me as trying way too hard to be something cool and special, and it shows. It just doesn't work. At least the Viper itself is beginning to gain some sort of acceptance as a result of having been around for seventeen years, but it's still a potent example of what happens when you try to purify some elemental idea so much that you lose sight of what you actually set out to do.
08/17/09
08/17/09
I was going to say that (not the part of you being an odd duck). I wonder if that's Mr. Devon in #4? I wonder if he's married?
08/17/09
The Viper is like that young buck that drinks a lot, talks a lot, and is always causing bar fights and getting thrown out of places. The Corvette, on the other hand, is like that older guy that sits quietly at the back of the bar because he's kicked so much ass that he has nothing left to prove.
Sure, a lot of people rag on the Corvettes, particularly the C4 Corvette, but even so, Corvettes just plain look cool when placed next to a Viper. They Corvette may not seem as aggressive as the Viper, but it does seem a hell of a lot more confident.
If only they could stick to the same bare-bones philosophy with the aesthetics as the they do with the rest of the car, it might very well be cool.
@Skaycog: A guy like that probably isn't married. He's got a crapload of money and a strange desire for Vipers. My guess is a different girl every couple of months.
08/17/09
But the original Viper, there was nothing more badass than that. I like curvy, dramatic sports cars (eg: I prefer the C5 to the C6, sorta), and the gen-1 Viper was the best expression of insanity in a rounded package. It had it all - big, long hood, big wheels, scoops and vents that let the sheet metal do the talking.
The Corvette may not have anything to prove, but he's only at the bar to drink his old age away. Next to that old Viper, any contemporary Corvette looks positively plebeian.
08/17/09
But as guns go, the Viper is kind of a blunderbuss. It's a significantly better blunderbuss than it was, but still.
And the C6 is one wicked mother of a knife. If you know what you're doing with the one, and the other guy doesn't with the other, it's going to be a short, bloody fight and the guy with the knife wins. By the same token, put two similarly-unskilled drivers in the cars, and the guy in the Vette wins, again. Put two brilliant drivers behind the wheels, and the guy in the Viper wins...provided he doesn't screw up, because the 'Vette is cold death in skilled hands, while the Viper requires skilled hands just to keep it together.
08/17/09
But for overall design maturity, I agree with that the C6 is one wicked mother of a knife.
08/17/09
08/17/09
Step 2: Charge 500,000 grand for it.
Step 3: Profit?
Sorry, guys, but I think the MAN-tide is a better execution of an inherently stupid idea.
08/17/09
@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: You're thinking of the wrong Devon. I'm thinking special edition synergies here. Besides, no one's forcing anyone to buy the car. You can still get your plain vanilla Viper if you want.
08/17/09
You know what, let's flip her over and see if she's got a pentastar on her somewhere. I have my suspicions.
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That, or start bugging GM for the Solstice/Sky platform, with the whole dead brand walking thing.
06/12/09
06/12/09
Actually, I'm surprised no one's bought the Fiero plans in the past 20 years.