I wouldn't necessarily call the gen 5 a sales failure. Look at how many 09 and 10 cars they sold. Each of those years was under 1000, I think one was even closer to 500. I'm hoping for the positive side of things and that they plan to put that money back into the car. Maybe the $15k price cut had to come from somewhere and the racing team is honestly the first place to look. Say they build 1000 cars with the $15k discount, that's 15 million dollars right there they are losing from what they expected. Maybe that margin was already built into the car's price, but that's not something most if any of us are privy to. When all is said and done, the race team is the least important piece of the puzzle. You might win fans with success on the track, but it's still limited exposure. Usually the fans you have are the ones that already own the cars. I don't know that any Vette owners out there are going to suddenly go buy a Viper because they won the series. They'll just say they need more performance balancing.
Pouring $15 million into advertising and getting the name out there with commercials and stuff is going to generate a lot more buzz than wining in a race series that frankly, not many people watch. Just look at the television coverage and you'll see what I mean. The Tudor series is all about the DP class and most of the time it's what the announcers are talking about because they're the fastest cars in the field. Sure, there have been some really good battles in GT that they cover from time to time, but more often than not you don't see more than a few minutes of GT car racing in a broadcast.
Admittedly, racing is one of the best ways to get technology to trickle down into road cars, but it's also hugely expensive and might **** money from other R&D divisions. It's always gloom and doom around here, we need to look at the bright side of this. Hopefully the extra money that might now be available is for development of the car that doesn't pertain to racing. A supercharged car really has no place in any racing series (not that chassis development doesn't carry over between models), but if you had to pick between spending money to certify an engine or racing which would you pick? A convertible is similarly alienated from racing, but it's still going to cost money to develop and tool up.
Instead of everyone throwing in the towel now, why don't we wait until official news that the Viper is dead? Until FCA gives a press release that says "There will be no more Vipers built, the product has reached the end of it's life", I'm tired of hearing people speculate. I'm glad most of you people aren't running the company or you would have cancelled the car two years ago already. Give them a chance and see what happens. Don't preach their end, wait with baited breath for the next great thing. What's the worst that could happen? If the car is cancelled the car is cancelled. Everyone saying it's over is only giving the company more reason to consider ending it. Look at the NSX. That thing has been in development for 5 years or something like that and people still wait. They haven't given up on it, despite a lack of information. Frankly, I thought the car was over after the 2010 anyway. I never expected them to release another one and I was fine with that back then. What's changed now to make people so fussy?
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