Man Maths: Dodge Viper

I’d love a Viper. An original open RT/10. I’ve had the most incredible adventures in them, such as driving from Calais to the far side of the Mont Blanc in a time I know people simply don’t believe possible. At night. In a rainstorm. I chased the Mille Miglia around Italy in one and when we came into towns and villages the marshals barred the road for all media and support vehicles save ours, whereupon we’d be greeted by the crowds like we were Giovanni Bracco in a Ferrari 250S. And I performed the biggest save of my life in one at a soaking wet Goodwood while trying to talk to camera.

That car was so extraordinary I don’t think we really spent that much time wondering whether it was any good or not. We just saw a car that looked like nothing else on Earth, powered by an engine like nothing else on Earth. No matter now that the monster 8-litre V10 produced less power than can a 2-litre four today, or that the roof was hopeless or that the boot was so small that if you were going away, you had to decide whether to take the hood or your luggage because it wouldn’t take both.

And it was shockingly, at times terrifyingly awful in the wet. I remember one 3am moment on the autoroute in that drive across France when I became aware I essentially had no steering at all. For all I knew the front tyres had stopped rotating and were now just resting gently on a pillow of water.

In fact, and offhand, I can’t think of a thing it actually did well. It wasn’t that fast, even then, its handling was very much of the meat-and-two-veg variety in the dry, the gearshift was ponderous, the ride lumpy, the cabin cramped and it didn’t even sound that good, relative to what you might expect given what lurked under the bonnet. And I no longer even regard the mad looks as a benefit, because I hate drawing attention to myself in cars.

So why on Earth do I want one? Why do I find myself trying to justify the decision by looking at all those faceless modern boxes you could spend the same amount of money upon? A really nice, low miles Viper costs around £40,000, which is also what you pay for a Peugeot 308 SW 195 e-DSC 7 GT Premium estate. Above all, what would I do with it if I bought one? Sit there wondering why the hell I did is my guess.

And yet there is an allure to these cars and it’s only getting stronger. In these ever more homogenised days, when even a Ford Fiesta now feels pleasingly old school, the attraction of a car which didn’t so much rip up the rulebook as make a blood sacrifice of it is not hard to see. I think I want one not so much for what it is, but all those things it is proudly, indefatigably not. It is the ultimate iconoclast’s car, a V10-powered two fingered salute to convention. And now, more than ever, that gives it a potent attraction.

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