Meeting your heroes: the time I rode in my dream Car (Viper Week 2021)
Meeting those you hold on a pedestal is a risky endeavor. Either you'll walk away satisfied, or you'll walk away crushed...
Have any of you ever said something in the past, thought you'd stick to it, and realize that you didn't stick to it thanks to certain circumstances? No, I'm not talking about numerous failed New Years resolutions or cheating on your significant other, I'm talking about seeing something so horrifying that you swore you'd never do it, only to end up doing it anyway without hesitation years later. For me, that moment was when I saw a few seconds of a documentary where they were talking about crashes in NASCAR. During the few short seconds I watched, they talked about what happens when a NASCAR hits the outside wall at 200 MPH. Apparently, a NASCAR can hit the outside wall with so much force it has the potential to rip the driver's head off their shoulders. As one would imagine, this left quite the impression on 9 year old me. Immediately after seeing that, I decided then and there that I would NEVER become a racecar driver so that my tombstone wouldn't read “beheaded in NASCAR at the age of 23” or something close to that.
Here's the thing though... I kind of... didn't remember this fear when, during my first ever trip to High Plains Raceway, I got a ride in my dream car: The Dodge Viper. Specifically, a Gen V Viper ACR Extreme. I was so excited at the possibility of riding in my dream car that the fear of potentially also dying in it never crossed my mind. Not only that, but I didn't take so much as five minutes to consider a whole host of other things I should've been concerned about. Here's the shortlist: I didn't know the driver before this encounter, I didn't know how he prepared the car (let alone if he did any preparations at all), I didn't know what the condition of the track was, and there was no way to guarantee whether or not we would get into an accident. Almost all of that went out the window when I saw the unmistakable shape of a Viper and the equally unmistakable size of its wing. In that moment, when me and my dad were looking for a place to park at the track, all I could think was “I really really really really really hope I can get a ride in that!”
Clearly, I did, otherwise this article wouldn't exist. Before I get into all my impressions from that ride though, let me give everyone a slight “reminder course” on the stats of the ACR (for those of you that are already well-versed on the ACR, feel free to skip the incoming section and go straight to the riding impressions).
The Car
I'm sure most of you know the drill: 645 Horsepower, 600 lb-ft of torque, 6-speed manual, RWD, 3300-ish pounds, and a V10 so big you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the heart of Titanoboa (a long-extinct snake that was roughly 40 feet long and could give big Crocodiles of the time a real fight). What you might not know is that the ACR-E (the E standing for Extreme) can produce nearly a ton of downforce at its top speed of 177 MPH. It also makes more than 1,200 pounds of downforce at 150 MPH, has 15.4-inch carbon-ceramic disc brakes with 6-piston calipers up front, 14.2-inch carbon-ceramic disc brakes with 4 piston calipers out back, 10-way adjustable suspension (10 clicks of rebound and 10 clicks of compression), and can pull and sustain 1.5 dizzying Gs in high-speed corners (ask me how I know). With a spec sheet like that, the ACR had better be quite the performer, and indeed it was (and still is to this day if I'm being honest). The Gen V Viper ACR-E was good enough to not only beat its former self, but was good enough to take the outright record at 13 tracks in the U.S. OK, that part is old news, but we're recapping the stats and achievements of the car for people who don't know, and not mentioning how many track records the then-latest Viper ACR amassed would be an almost unforgivable omission.
Thankfully, the Viper ACR I rode in –as far as I know– was completely stock, so there's no additional rap sheet to go through here. As cool as it would've been to ride in a Viper ACR with a few extra ponies (and lord knows what other modifications), I'm glad I got the factory-fresh experience of what the car is like out of the box. Oh, right! I'm supposed to be telling you guys what my impressions of the car were. Let's do that then!
The Sound
As most of you probably know, the sound of the Viper is one of those “you love it or you hate it” type of things. Some people say it sounds like a dump truck, and some people say it makes all the right noises (excluding the droning that sometimes happens). The thing about the dump truck comment is that it is essentially true, but only at idle or below 3,000 RPM. More people should hear what a Viper sounds like above 4,000 RPM, as it doesn't resemble a dump truck in the slightest (or anything else for that matter) at full chat.
“What does a Viper sound like then?” Is the question I imagine is in your mind right now. Simply put, it sounds like... uh... hmm, there's no easy comparison to make here. Thanks to the Viper's unique genetic makeup (pushrod, low-revving, odd-firing, and massive in displacement) the bellow you hear isn't one usually made by a V10 engine. It doesn't sound quite like a Lamborghini Gallardo/Huracan, it definitely doesn't sound like a Lexus LFA, and it sounds nothing like an E60 BMW M5 either. Similarly, thanks to the additional two cylinders, the roar it makes isn't the one you'd hear from V8s. I mean, it doesn't sound like any Hellcat, any Mustang, any Corvette, or any European car with a big V8. To explain what the Viper sounds like, I'll have to be much more direct (Read: use few comparisons and talk directly about the car itself) and be a little bit creative.
Before we dive into that earnestly though, I need to stress that we will be talking about the outside sound and the inside sound separately, because there's an aspect to the exhaust noise from the inside of the car that I completely missed when listening to it from the outside. OK, now let's begin.
The Outside Sound:
When talking about the exterior noise of the Viper, there are two aspects we need to take into account: The Induction Noise, and the Exhaust Noise.
“Does the Viper really have induction noise!?” I tend to believe it does. While it can be hard to distinguish between the sound coming from the exhaust and the sound coming from the intake (for multiple reasons), my experience leads me to believe the Viper has some level of induction noise.
Luckily for me, my first ever trip to High Plains Raceway was made when a “private event” of sorts was being held. This was advantageous because they allowed people to stand behind the barrier that was closest to the track, and this barrier was so close it was the only thing separating the racetrack from the pitlane. Suffice it to say, these were easily the front-row seats in terms of viewing spots. I bring this up because it would be easy to dismiss my claim by saying “it's probably just the exhaust sound because you're at an angle (or far away and at an angle) when the car goes by, and the Viper has side pipes”. While I'm acutely aware of this possibility, I don't think that was the case. Thanks to me and many other people standing behind the aforementioned barrier, we were as close as possible to being straight ahead of any car blasting down the start/finish straight. As you can imagine, this put me and everyone else at this spot in the prime position to hear the glorious big-displacement V10 bellow as it went into wide-open throttle coming out of the last corner.
What struck me (and continues to strike me) about Vipers when they're at full throttle is how you can almost hear the displacement. When someone goes flat out in a Viper at low RPM (particularly in a slow corner for example), there's a bass that conveys the enormity of the engine, the sheer magnitude of the reciprocating components in the engine block. I cite the engine block specifically because this deep resonance sounds like it comes from low down in the engine bay, and the Viper's engine block is mounted very low down in the car (thanks to cam-in-block tech and the fact it's a pushrod motor). It's an utterly guttural sound that can only be emanated from the thundering reverberation of 512 all-aluminum cubic inches of V10 might. To put it another way, the bass of the V10 at low RPM isn't unlike the bass of those who possess a deep voice.
However, there's more to it than that. Once the Viper starts to creep above 5,000 RPM (especially 5,500 RPM) a new sound is added to the mix. From the bass of the engine's mass comes a new noise that resides somewhere near the top of the engine rather than the bottom. With this sound, there's an actual note to be heard, rather than simply the size of massive pistons pumping up and down faster and faster at the request of the driver calling forth all their fury. Mind you, this note is not civilized or musical, because –like the car– it's completely primal. To reiterate, it doesn't have the rhythmic but deafening tone of an Aventador, it doesn't have the sweet song possessed by a 458 Italia, and it doesn't have the sonorous voice of an Aston Martin. No, the warcry emanated from the Viper can best be described as nothing short of savage, like the result of poking a wild animal with an especially pointy stick.
It's the audible characterization of the saying “an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object”
With that said, actually describing the note in question is no easy task. As of right now, I've spent three days rewatching a few videos trying to come up with a good explanation for this outburst and I can't think of any other reasonable answers for what the induction noise sounds like, so here goes nothing: In my mind, I think of the pistons attempting a brazen jailbreak but are constantly foiled by their warden (the heads). The dastardly, oppressive heads continually keep the pistons in their cell by blocking the only way out. To me, it sounds like the pistons are blatantly punching the heads in an obvious and audible attempt to leave the engine, fly into the sky, and then return themselves into the ground from which they came. It's a hilariously “metallic” sound of pure rage that summarizes the entire character of the car: Angry, brash, bold, and unapologetic (and loud, don't forget loud).
It's this war between the heads (encasing the combustion chamber) and the pistons (attempting to flee it). The pistons are trying to Mcgregor their way out of the tomb, and the heads are resolutely (and successfully) pulling a Mayweather to their request. It's the audible characterization of the saying “an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object”, which results in a noise that –in my opinion– sounds like a mid-to-high Baritone engaging in a brutal gladiatorial warcry not unlike those of some prehistoric dinosaurs. It's thoroughly barbaric, and fantastic because of it.
However, I know a few people will find the above descriptions less than satisfactory (and I don't blame you to be honest). To fix this, I have linked a few videos below exemplifying what I'm talking about so you all can have a listen and tell me yourselves in the comments what you think the induction noise sounds like. For now though, I'm going to move on because I could belabor this point for a millennia.
To close, would you laugh at me if I said the Viper sounded “exotic”? Actually, don't answer that, I'm sure you're already snickering at the mere thought. Consider this though: How many production cars have such an omnidirectional, multi-sensory sound like the Viper does? Don't get me wrong, there are definitely cars that sound less unsophisticated, sound sweeter, and sound more musical, but how many production cars have such a prominent induction sound? How many production cars have such an unbridled brutality to their sound? Not many. It isn't to everyone's tastes, but like a proper exotic, you won't mistake the sound of the Viper for anything else.
Now let's please move on.
The next (and thankfully last) portion of the outside sound we need to talk about is the exhaust noise. Mercifully, there isn't much to write here! Seeing as the exhaust noise is pretty similar to the induction noise, there isn't much to go over that hasn't already been beaten to death in the previous section. In fact, the only real difference to speak of between the exhaust noise and the induction noise is that the “metallic” overtone is completely lost. The note of the sound is pretty much the same, but that “heads vs pistons” battle I mentioned earlier is no longer present. In other words, you're only hearing the result of a big, odd-firing V10, rather than that plus two vital components seemingly throwing hands in the depths of the engine bay.
The Interior Sound:
Apologies for the spots in this photo, not sure why those appeared.
Much like the exhaust and intake noise, there isn't much variance to report here. The note I heard on the inside is very similar to the one I heard on the outside (but muffled because, you know, I was in the cabin). It isn't all business as usual though, since there's an element to the exhaust sound from the inside that I never heard from the outside.
You've heard someone roll their Rs right? Cool, because the Viper's exhaust note –when sitting inside– sounds like the car is rolling its Rs. No joke! Make car noises and then do the tongue motion for rolling your Rs, and that gives you a very good idea of what I heard when sitting in the passenger seat. For those of you who can't roll your Rs (like I couldn't a long time ago), what I experienced was kind of a hellish “thrum” not totally unlike when someone strums a harp. Except this “strumming” was brash and idiosyncratic in the best way possible.
The Acceleration
Let's not sugarcoat this, it's quick. Anything with 645 horsepower and 600 lb-ft of power-grid-supplying torque will be. Sure, the ACR doesn't have the top speed of its aero-less counterparts, but that 1,700+ pounds of atmosphere-tearing downforce doesn't really take effect until roughly 130 MPH and beyond. This means that the ACR does the quarter-mile in the same time as the “normal” Viper (low-to-mid 11-second range) and does it at roughly the same speed as well (about 128 MPH). Of course, those stats mean little if I don't corroborate them with what I experienced, right? Let me dive into the juicy details. Like I said at the beginning, it's quick. There were multiple times where we had rapidly eclipsed 60 MPH and were well on our way to 100 MPH (sometimes even 20 MPH north of that). I've heard many reviewers talk about how easy it is to speed in the Viper and I totally get it now. You'd only have to flex your big toe an inch while cruising down a highway to get yourself in big trouble. Funnier (or scarier) still, if you were in second, you'd only have to pin the throttle for three seconds to go 20 MPH over the speed limit. I'm talking 65 MPH to 85 MPH in a literal snap. One little blip and a cop would be completely justified in giving you a ticket. It is both insane and glorious that mere mortals are given the option –if they work hard and save up– to acquire their own force of nature.
Speaking of, this “force of nature” starts as a mild but strong push below 4000 RPM and then gets quickly (but progressively) more relentless. Almost like the engine says this at each RPM:
-3000 RPM: “... You sure? Yeah right coward.”
-4000 RPM: Agitated “You couldn't handle this.”
-4500 RPM: “Last. Warning.”
-5000 RPM: “ALRIGHT! YOU WANT VENOM!? HERE'S THE VENOM!!!”
5000 RPM really is the magic number here. That's where the car truly comes alive and where the full fury of the all-aluminum heart stems from. I hate to use this comparison (because the powerband is far more linear than this), but the sensation isn't totally unlike how people described V-TEC back when it was a popular meme between the years 2014 and 2016. It's not that dramatic, but the engine does pull noticeably harder once you crest 5000 RPM. That said, the Viper pulls hard from pretty much any RPM (seeing as you have massive torque across the powerband), but the Gen V loves life between 4500 and 6400 RPM.
All of this meant that when I got the chance to ride in my dream car, I resembled something of a bobblehead. Once the driver put the pedal to the metal, my head was quickly thrown back into the seat and proceeded to stay there every time WOT (wide open throttle) was applied. I only managed to unstick my head from the seat when he upshifted, and those didn't last long at all, so my efforts were rendered entirely futile. Disastrous, when this very detail was exacerbating my motion-sickness. The car wasn't pulling as much Gs in the straights as it was in the corners, but my head being glued to the seat made me feel those Gs in a way that my brain didn't enjoy.
Every other part of me enjoyed the hell out of it though, I even found it humorous the first time it happened (which was before the motion-sickness had a chance to rear its ugly head). I know it seems stupid to find this funny but it really shouldn't have been that difficult to keep my head off the seat! Yet there I was, struggling to do that very thing.
I won't lie though, I was expecting to feel slightly more force. Make no mistake, it was still plenty surprising and impressive with how hard I was pushed into my seat, but it wasn't quite how I thought it would be. Perhaps my expectations were a little unrealistic, perhaps being a mile above sea level sapped a noticeable amount of power from the engine, there's no real way to know (it probably was a bit of both). What I do know is that I need to ride in a Viper again and feel that rush of speed once more.
The Handling
And now for the metric that made the ACR so famous: Its handling. If I were asked to sum up its cornering capabilities in one word, it would be immense. The grip is immense, the turn-in is immense, the cornering speed is –say it with me y'all– IMMENSE! Everything related to the business of going around turns is dialed up to 20 in the ACR. Your normal Pirelli P-Zero Corsas have been swapped for ACR specific Kumho Ecsta V720 street-legal slicks, the dual-mode Bilstein suspension of the GTS has been replaced by 10-way manually adjustable units from the same company, the spring rates are more than double that of the TA, the steel Stoptech rotors are replaced by Brembo Carbon Ceramics, 4-piston calipers up front make way for 6-piston calipers, and I don't even need to mention all the aerodynamic sorcery added to the body and chassis. Clearly, changes of this magnitude would have a profound effect on any car and the Viper is no different.
There's a somewhat old Top Gear episode where Jeremy Clarkson compares a then-new Jaguar XKR-S to a Nissan GT-R. While driving the GT-R, he goes around a corner and you can see that his face is being physically pulled to one side. When I was... well, “hanging on” inside the ACR, I felt a lot like that. Mind you, because of my small frame, my whole body was imitating Clarkson's face. I would shift from bolster to bolster as we went around High Plains Raceway's tight and fast turns. When reviewers said the ACR seriously needed a proper 6-point harness, they weren't kidding. I'm not exactly the best example for fitting in-between seat bolsters (as I certainly didn't in the ACR), but even trying to hold myself up in the seat would've proved to be a challenge. Not that I did such a thing, because doing so (combined with the already massive g-forces) would've accelerated the room spin I was experiencing at the time. If you're imagining a motion-sick Cody basically being thrown around like a rag-doll in a 645 freedom-units supercar, then you couldn't be more right. Truly, grip like that is one of the 9 wonders of the world. In fact, the grip was so darn good that in one turn (a fast uphill corner) it was enough to (briefly) quell my motion-sickness. I don't know how, but it did. Astonishing.
Turn-in is equally exceptional. If anything, I'd say it was practically preemptive! The turn-in was so immediate, so eager, so unwavering, it legitimately felt like the car was turning a millisecond or two before the driver acted on the thought. He would turn, and it was like the car would turn that little bit more, always being a step ahead of the driver in terms of steering angle. This made the front-end feel nearly weightless (even when sitting in the passenger seat) and it was beautiful. You would think that planet-sized V10 would make the front-end plow like a tractor but it doesn't! Thanks to the Viper's perfect 50/50 weight distribution, I hardly felt any interference from the engine or its weight on the front axle (which the engine is behind). We can't discount the benefit of 295-section front tires either, as those massively contribute to the lack of understeer (or push) I felt.
Now, I would like to talk about the epic and harrowing corner speeds I saw while riding as a passenger, but I can't. Why you ask? Because I couldn't look without –you guessed it– getting more motion sick. I think there were a few times where I saw 80 MPH in a corner that I would've thought could only be taken at around 60 MPH, but that's all I have sadly. Let's just say that you can't get as sick as I was without some serious corner speed (and the Gs that come with that) though.
If there's one drawback to the Viper's handling that I noticed, it's that I found it difficult to tell when the car was losing grip. From time to time (especially in a particular corner) the “alarm bells” in my head would go off because I thought we were a few MPH away from the back end stepping out. Thankfully (and amazingly) it never did, but I can see how it could be hard to judge where the limits of the Viper really are. It didn't seem to lose grip progressively, but rather it would continue holding on until it would just break loose once you passed the grip threshold. With that said, you either have to push it or be incredibly careless to hit those limits easily.
The Interior
(The spots are in this photo too unfortunately)
Sadly, I don't have that much to say here. I don't have experience with earlier Vipers (so no comparisons can be made to those), I was at a racetrack (so I can't confidently say it was “quiet” nor tell you if the Gen V is quieter than prior Vipers), I didn't spend a lot of time examining the materials (they looked and felt quite nice but that's all I can say), and I can't really comment on the seats (they felt comfortable to me but I wasn't paying them much attention). The one thing I can talk about though is cabin heat, and specifically, whether or not the Viper's side pipes and engine are the cause of that heat.
Unfortunately, it was a very hot day when I got my first ride in a Viper. It was between 90 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so it wasn't like any car on track that day was going to be less than sweltering inside. I had ridden in a friend's Mk2 race-prepped Lotus Cortina (stripped interior and all) prior and it was just as hot in that car as it was in the ACR.
I'm not totally sure how much of the heat in the ACR was due to the car itself and how much of it was due to the sheer heat that day, but I'm going to say 70 percent of it was how hot it was that day and 30 percent of it was the car (especially the side pipes). It was definitely hot enough to make me sweat, and riding in two rolling saunas didn't help either, but overall the heat in the ACR's cabin wasn't unbearable by any means. Had it been colder that day, or had the A/C been on (not likely to happen), I suspect it would've been warm but not baking inside.
Bonus: Is the car loud?
Not exceptionally for a supercar. There were other cars at the track and there were a least three cars that were louder. Vettes are louder, a Ford GT40 replicar was louder, my friend's Cortina was louder! And that thing only has a 4-Cylinder engine (I think it was below or at 2-Liters of displacement). To say the Viper is one of the loudest supercars out there simply isn't true (as much as the 6 yr old in me might wish it was).
From the inside, it's much the same story. While unquestionably loud, the exhaust was quieter than a Bullitt Mustang I rode in previously. However, cabin noise was definitely greater. Not intolerable, but still greater.
Frankly, the car is so “not that loud” I think I might've been able to bear the ride without my helmet on (purely from a noise standpoint, I was more than happy to wear my helmet for my personal safety).
Am I glad that I met my hero then? Hell yeah!
And... that's it! Those are my entire thoughts of the first time I got to ride in my dream car! What did you think? Let me know in the comments below. I'll see you all tomorrow for the last Viper Week article!
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Comments (3)
Wow! That mush have been an amazing experience!
Wonderful article. As for the spots on the photos, that might be because there are fingerprints or dirt on your image sensor if you took those photos with a DSLR. If not, it might be lens flare, but other than that I don’t know what could have caused it.
Thanks Mason! Mercifully I've managed to avoid touching the image sensor by accident, but it is possible there was dirt on it. I also had an ND filter on my lens and, sadly, I did touch it twice by accident at that time IIRC. I've done that before...
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