Joseph Houss is right when he indicates that Dodge did not do anything slick or underhanded in recalibrating the Viper’s power rating. Quite the opposite, they stepped up to the revised test and it turns out their car made slightly more power than expected under the new standards. This means that Dodge never gamed the old test to inflate their horsepower numbers. By comparison, it seems that many Asian automakers did game the system and are now reporting lower numbers across the board (See detnews.com).
It is quite unlikely that there will be a horsepower increase before the next generation Viper. A significant power upgrade (+5%) will likely necessitate a $10mm emissions recertification. If Dodge had a hard time ponying up $6mm to get a basic top on the car (as was reported elsewhere on this forum) then you can rest assured that $10mm extra is not forthcoming any time soon. There is simply no business case to support such a thing now. Remember, the SRT-10 is three years into its production run. So Dodge would have to try and spread the emissions recertification cost over the remaining run of about 4-5 years worth of Vipers as they have already missed the first three years of production. With year-to-date Viper sales down an astonishing 25% year-over-year the likelihood that there will be enough sold in the future to justify the cost fails the common sense test.
As I have said before you have got to stop comparing yourself to GM and the Z06 and instead focus on survival at this point. The Corvette program spent 1,000 hours on wind tunnel testing at $25,000 an hour. Yes, that’s $25mm on aerodynamics alone. The race team is fed to the tune of over $20mm a year. The Corvette's development budget and reach are enormous and, as a result, the vehicle’s profit is significant. The horsepower race is pointless now as it takes more than sheer horsepower to sell a car. The Viper has always had top horsepower numbers but still the inexorable sales slide into the abyss proceeds unabated.
DCX had to close the CAAP when the unsold supply of Vipers got to 200 days. Month-to-month July-August 2005 the day’s supply went from 101 days to 144. If that rate continues another plant shutdown will come in a month. Though they necessarily put a brave face on it, the company can only tolerate so many of these unfortunate facts before there is a Come to Jesus meeting. By comparison GM has run the Bowling Green facility on overtime since the C6’s inception and, as such, barely has the additional ability to meet surging Z06 demand which is fast approaching levels of absurdity that has left even GM’s most optimistic forecasters slack-jawed.
Every Viper production decision is now severely dollar driven and those dollars are quite literally dwindling by the month. All too many Viper owners will still be chasing the horsepower chimera at full speed when the program finally goes over a cliff. Porsche, Ferrari and Corvette are having no trouble at all selling their cars, the first two often at substantial prices beyond the Viper which offers more horsepower than almost all of them. Yet they are all enjoying record sales while the struggling Viper’s future is in doubt.
This is not a horsepower issue folks and it never has been.
