Friday 28th January 2005

Dodge Viper Coupe could land here

Chrysler boss reckons 'it wouldn't take much'

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According to Autocar, "it wouldn't take much" for Chrysler to launch the Dodge Viper Coupé -- sorry, SRT-10 -- over here in the UK. Following in the footsteps of the £77,500 drop-top, whose UK launch was November 2004, Chrysler's sales and marketing boss Thomas Hausch said that a final decision about car had not yet been made.

It might also be accompanied by the 425bhp 300C SRT-8, the 300C estate and maybe even the Firepower concept, all shown at the recent shows in the US.

It's all part and parcel of the general trend of US carmakers, desperate to expand their markets, of cashing in on the popularity in the UK of big-cube muscle cars, which through the so-called 'halo effect', does their brand image no harm at all. Reports strongly suggest that many of these cars can negotiate corners too, these days.

Links

Autocar story: www.autocarmagazine.co.uk/News_Article.asp?NA_ID=213171

Drop-top SRT-10: www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=9255

SRT-8: www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=9700, www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=9531

[Dan]

yeh... it wouldn't take much...

simply double the price and not much else.

[shadowninja]

Dan said:

yeh... it wouldn't take much... simply double the price and not much else.

mind you... people are willing to pay the price which encourages them... quite easy to force manufacturers to lower the price... nobody buy a new car.

[r5cer]

And left hand drive wide supercars are great for our roads ......

[fq330]

Totally pointless for car manufacturers to launch these kind of cars in the UK - with the govt openly targetting anything that does more than 20MPH, the UK will soon be a no-go zone for sports car manufacturers.

[v8thunder]

fq330 said:

Totally pointless for car manufacturers to launch these kind of cars in the UK - with the govt openly targetting anything that does more than 20MPH, the UK will soon be a no-go zone for sports car manufacturers.

...and seeing as though small specialist sports car manufacturers and race/rally teams and tuning outlets make up the overwhelming majority of the British motor industry, I suppose the government has a duty to pay these people redundancy and a pension for life.

I mean, if you're prepared to wipe out an entire industry entirely because of your own control freakery, what are you going to do to help the people your opinionated, statistics-led crusade leaves without work?