What would you take, the Hellcat powered V8 Viper or the nitrous V10 Viper?
The Dodge Viper is probably one of the most unique and rare automobiles to ever come out of the American supercar era. Starting off production in the late 1990s, these cars very quickly dominated the enthusiast space and built a name for themselves as the fastest cars produced in the nation. You probably know that the Vipers ended production in 2017 but what you might not have known is that they did a wild promotional program where you could choose literally any option or sets of features for your Viper near the end of its production, sort of like the Hellcat jailbreaks.
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Speaking of Hellcats, the 2016 model featured in this video, which was customized with that very same program, is about to go up against a 2001 Dodge Viper with a Hellcat V8 under the hood. Not just any Hellcat mind you, this is a full-blown Hellcat redeye engine which, from the factory, should be making somewhere around 797 hp. Neither of these cars are completely bone stock, no matter how much the owner of the 2016 Viper wants you to believe it is. With the help of some performance pulleys and bigger injectors, the Hellcat engine is making 850 hp while the V 10 featured in the 2016 model is running a 300 shot of nitrous bringing horsepower up well into the high 900 hp range and over 1000 lb/ft of torque at the wheels.
These two cars are going head to head in an effort to defeat the other on the dragstrip, courtesy of the Hoonigan team. The first race must’ve had the 2016 Viper owner feeling pretty good about himself as he shot down the track with the Hellcat Viper swerving in and out of the lane behind them. Issues with traction can really be a major hurdle for drivers of all skill levels to overcome when racing but this was soon resolved for round two. In that race, the Hellcat Viper took the opportunity of added traction and gapped the newer Viper by several car lengths. When all is said and done, it was time to negotiate race number three and they settled on giving the 2016 Viper the hit and placing the Viper Hellcat a car length behind. Despite the obvious advantages, the new gen Viper still lost to the Hellcat powered supercar, thoroughly pissing off the V10 Viper community and making for a great show of Hellcat power.
