The Dodge Viper was introduced to the masses in 1990 as an answer to the Shelby Cobra. Chrysler wanted a sports car that could best the Cobra’s 0-100-0 times in addition to being an experiment for new manufacturing techniques. 1990 was the year they dropped a V10 all aluminum engine in it which truly gave the Viper its fangs.

The original V10 was reportedly built with the involvement of Lambourghini, which was partly owned by Chrysler at the time; the basic engineering was of course Chrysler’s, since it was based on the venerable 360, but Lambourghini worked on the cooling system, crankshaft balance, weight reduction, and fine tuning; the Italian automaker’s expertise in aluminum was also tapped, since the Viper had an aluminum block to save roughly 150 pounds of weight. Unique features of the Viper version of the V-10, versus the truck engine, included a low-profile cross-ram intake with dual throttle bodies, the manifolds, oil pan, heads, and accessory drive; the compression ratio was raised, the pistons lightened, the maximum engine speed increased, the valves enlarged, the rods and crank strengthened. In the end, few components were shared with the truck engine.

The Viper’s 8.4 liter engine develops 600hp with 560 ft-lbs of torque, 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. The MSRP is a honkin’ $88k and change. Compare it to the Corvette Z06 at $74k and the ZR1 at $104k and one may consider it competitively priced.

Chrysler is presently in negotiations to sell the Viper nameplate to some other car company. The present day economic crisis seems to have hit Mopar especially hard so they have to cut costs and trim some fat. It’ll be a sad day when the brand goes to Honda or Fiat or BMW.

Just so we remember, a nice Viper gallery awaits after the jump.