1990-2000 The Dodge Viper

First Gen Dodge Viper

Dodge Viper GTS

Origin: The Dodge Viper is known as the most menacing car that has ever been produced in American history. A small sleek body packing a huge V-10 engine that can get to top speed of 180 mph.....any car like that means serious business. The reason the Viper was built was to compete against Chevy's Corvette, which was pretty much the king at the time. Based off of the idea of the Corvette, Dodge made their Venomous beast.
Purpose: Dodge took a huge gamble when they introduced the Viper. As mentioned before, the Viper was made to dethrone the Corvette. As the car was solely built for speed, the Viper attracted many sports cars enthusiasts. However, what really brought the success of the car was the time it was made. the 1980's were all about pony cars, but when this came out, everyone's head turned towards it. The Viper had an extremely unusual built to it as it shocked the entire US at unveiling. The car was made with extremely light material with its body and the tires to maximize the speed of the car. However, the thing that shocked everyone the most was that the car had a V-10 engine. This engine was only made for trucks, so no one predicted that a light weight car would have such a massive engine. This made the public go crazy as they were seeing car with new specs, and ultimately leading to them loving the Viper. Seeing the success of the car, Dodge introduced many new models such as the ACR and which was purely for racing.

Viper Pick-up Truck

Concept Viper Motorcycle

Value: The Viper really showed us how much technology had increased over the past fifty-so years. Dodge was able to pull off something that would have blown a car up in the 1950. The car impacted the world of racing the most as the vehicle was made only for speed and not for looks. The 1990's is when Clinton took office who also fixed and enhanced the economy. This meant that more people would have jobs and less would be in poverty. For Dodge, this meant that more people would buy their monstrosity which would also lead to them making more variants of the car. This car was loved by the public so much that they wanted dodge to make a Viper pick-up truck and a Viper motorcycle as well.

Current SRT Viper

Limitations:  The 1990's was also the time when cell phones and the internet were growing at an incredible pace. These two things are probably the most used things in the world today. The Viper does not tell us anything about the growth of these two types of technology. This is so as the the Viper was expressing growth of technology in the sense of automotive. However, the Viper caused the same uproar if not more than the internet as people at the time were more into cars. This shows how revolutionary this car was.