#Dailydriver Viper

Can This Infamous Snake Be a Tame Commuter Car?

- Elana Scherr

I knew the day was coming. But when it arrived, I shriveled and hissed like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. “We wants it. We needs it. The precious. We hates them. We hates them. They steals it.”

No golden trinket caused this meltdown. Rather it was the request for the return of an Adrenaline Red 2015 Dodge Viper GT that our parent company TEN was forced to buy after someone unnamed ruined all its resale value by off-roading it on a Motocross course. (RK Episode 38).

When I came on as editor, I claimed the keys as a birthright. I’d driven numerous Vipers before and always said that I’d happily daily drive one, but here was a chance to prove it. Could I use a 645-hp two-seat $100,000 sports car as my only transportation? Would my love for the car turn out to be a fling? I ended up driving the Dodge, which I nicknamed Red Snek, for almost three months. Together we covered 3,600 miles including five road trips, all sorts of errands, and clutch-heavy, hour-long commutes to the office. Knowing my own sense of drivability to be skewed from a lifetime of only driving old beaters, I took on many passengers and got as many second opinions on the car as possible. Everyone from co-workers to my mom thought it looked great, and I found myself looking back over my shoulder in parking lots, whispering, “I love you, you beauty,” as if it could hear me. My passengers’ opinions ranged from delighted to finding it mildly cramped, but all were impressed with its speed. “It just goes like a red rocket ship,” my friend Elizabeth said.

Rocket ship is the best description for the Viper. Not just because of its performance,