2016 Dodge Viper ACR and ACR Extreme -Is Chrysler intentionally trying to kill Generation 5 Viper?

People running the Viper program at +Chrysler could never be accused of practicing sound marketing and design practices.  What has plagued Viper from the first car produced back in 1992 is the absolute lack of market appeal and this trend seems to be going strong with the latest and most likely very last generation of Viper.   Although Viper was never intented to become a mass market piece of plastic as Corvette has been, even the most exclusive production program has to meet certain sales objectives to continue and this small detail appears to escape the Chrysler executives, along with few other problems.  As it is, the exclusive Viper has failed to meet its minimum sales objectives and became even more exclusive due to the lack of people interested in buying these cars at all.

Of course, a naive mind would argue that lack of sales makes it more exclusive but in reality, this only makes the Viper a car to avoid, with a reputation of a total non-seller.  For comparisson, the other limited Chrysler production program, Hellcat has been a raging sales success, selling out all produced cars and in fact, giving the more greedy dealers a great excuse to mark the cars up because the suckers willing to pay extra are around to play along.  Unlike with the generation 5 Viper and its mark up attempts by the same dealers, the buyers are not turned off and continue to pull the trigger while the Viper, currently and supposedly offered with hefty discounts is still a non seller (500 cars sold is hardly close to the targeted 1500 cars annual production rate).

In the midst of this disaster, the unfortunate reality is that there is absolutely nobody in the Viper program interested in having this model survive beyond Generation 5 that appears to be ending with 2017 production year.

As pointed out in this blog in the past, what the Viper program really needs is a CONVERTIBLE version of the car but somehow this is not going to happen.  Never mind the lack of DTC transmission that would generate more sales due to performance improvements, the lack of drop top is the other and most likely more important factor contributing heavily to the death of Viper as we know it.



Instead of broadening appeal of the car by offering a drop top, the Viper management continues to limit its marketing potential by concentrating on a more hardcore track version of the car then before.  Apparently the fact the previous track versions, TA and TA 2.0 were complete sales flop did not sink in because now, there is the ACR revival and if this was not puzzling enough, there is eve a more hardcore version of ACR, ACR Extreme.

The real question is WHY?  Why offer more choices in the niche that is dwindling instead of offering a version that could appeal to more potential buyers?  It does not take a genius to figure out that number of buyers would increase but this part as usual escapes the Viper corporate management.

Based on personal experience, it is guaranteed that more people would be interested in purchasing the new Viper than only when offered as a hatchback, especially when the car is visually so difficult to distinguish from the SECOND VIPER GENERATION.  Purchasing of the newest Viper is not limited to those who must have the newest and supposedly greatest.  What possible incentive can people owning fourth generation of Viper roadster to switch to the fifth generation hatchback? 

Unfortunately, they would be more inclined to buying the piece of shit called Corvette C7 Z06 convertible becase as horrible as those new Corvettes are, they would not force the buyer to abandon the convertible lifestyle.  The outcome?  The current owners of the Generation 4 cars either hang on to their cars (the performance and horsepower gains are neglible when compared with the new Viper) or they jump the ship and switch to another brand, with the piece of shit C7 Z06 being closest pricewise, even though it cannot deliver on its performance figures).

So the question is why offer two levels of Viper Generation 5 ACR?  And the other question is why offer ACR at all if there is no validation from Nurburgring at all, regarding its superiority over the previous generation ACR that managed to record 7:12 time on that track.

To make the matters even worse, the new Viper ACR starts out at 128k in its lowest configuration, already difficult to be driven on the street while the even more hardcore EXTREME version adds on another 6k on top of the ACR "base" price tag.  Confused?  Of course and being confused at $134k rehash of previous generation ACR cannot translate into more sales.

There is nothing wrong with coming up with a hardcore version of the Viper but this should not be the sole objective of the Viper program, there should be an incentive there to attract more owners of the previous generation that included a convertible version of the car.  Unfortunately by now, it may already be too late to change this failed direction.  The Viper program may just be killed on the same note as it has been limping along until now.

More on the Viper ACR and ACR Extreme soon.