Back when Ferraris were more about passion and soul than scalpel-sharp dynamics there was an old cliché that covered a multitude of sins. I'm sure you remember the classic line 'you pay for the engine and get the rest for free' from many a road test. I used to think that a terribly romantic and wonderfully evocative phrase and wondered if I'd ever get to use it. Of course, really it's just a cheesy way of saying that a car is pretty ropey but it makes a decent noise and goes very quickly. And so we come to the new Dodge SRT-10 and an opportunity not to be missed. Your £77,500 buys the engine, the rest you get for free...
Ah, but what an engine: 8.3 litres of V10 kicking out 500bhp and a terrifying 525lb ft torque. Enough to fling the 1546kg roadster to 60mph from zero in sub-4sec and from 0-100mph-0 in less than 13 seconds according to the press pack. The Viper, sorry SRT-10 (the Viper name is already a registered trademark in the UK, so here it's simply SRT-10) tops out at 190mph. With those performance figures and real exclusivity, the £77,500 entry price seems entirely reasonable. 'Supercars' come no cheaper than America's lovable monster.
And a monster it is. It may be trimmed-down and a bit 'European' for Viper diehards, but the SRT-10 still feels
a size or three too big for British roads. Sweeping A-roads suddenly feel like single-track lanes when you're grappling with 500bhp and left-hand drive. It sounds monstrous, too; not tuneful exactly, but the loud, flat barrppp at idle builds to a fierce torrent of hot exhaust gases firing out of either side-exit exhaust as the revs build. It feels like there's a whole engine-room up front rather than just one solitary unit. And the Dodge serves up super-sized portions of grunt anytime and anywhere.
The 8.3-litre V10 is into its stride early; at 1500rpm you're into hot-hatch killing territory, at 1800rpm you can wave goodbye to Porsche Boxsters and from 2500rpm to 6000rpm only the mightiest of supercars match the reach and scale of the SRT-10's numbing performance.
But there's another cliché, the one about power and control, that the Dodge engineers would have done well to remember. As it is they focused all their efforts on making the Viper stunningly quick and heroic at pulling huge cornering G on a smooth skidpan.
That's a real shame because on British roads, and I'm not talking really testing B-roads here, the SRT-10 feels horribly out of its depth. Try to use that 525lb ft and the Viper will spit you off the road in an instant. Half-throttle feels like too much most of the time.
Traction isn't the issue. In the dry the faintly ludicrous 345/30 ZR19 Michelin tyres dig in and simply fire the SRT-10 up the road, but it's as a consequence of very wide and stiff-sidewalled runflat tyres and ultra-stiff double-wishbone suspension that the big Dodge is such a handful. It weaves around under power, sniffing out ruts and cambers in the road and bouncing sharply from one bump to the next. You need to be busy at the wheel just to counter the effects of the road surface on the attitude of the car in a straight line. Then you hit the brakes and the whole car snakes around underneath you. You're working hard before you've even tackled any corners.
Ultimately you'll never trouble the limits of adhesion on the road in dry conditions, but with quick yet remote steering (the worst possible combo) and a nervous, easily unsettled chassis you'll feel like you're driving on the edge of a very large precipice even if the tyres aren't even faintly chirping. It's deeply unnerving. Throw in an over-servoed brake pedal action, a slow and occasionally obstructive gearshift and the SRT-10's girth, and you simply have to concede that only an idiot or driving god could unlock the Viper's potential on the public road. In the wet it must be character-building to say the least.
Trying to find the SRT-10's cornering limits is best reserved for an empty test track. It has enormous grip and naturally edges into understeer at the limit. A dab of brakes on entry upsets things a bit but to really get the tail swinging takes a brutal lift-and-lob technique followed by full throttle. And as soon as grip is relinquished you're praying for it to all end without incident. It is a hellishly difficult car to hold sideways or indeed to recover cleanly. Not the ultimate trackday toy either, then.
Unfortunately and perhaps unsurprisingly, the SRT-10 simply doesn't work in the UK. It's too stiff to exploit, too wide to thread with confidence and those 345-section rear tyres give it a mind of its own. TVRs offer similar performance for thousands less and a Porsche 911 or Noble would simply eat it alive on British roads in any conditions. And then there's the quality of the interior, which is just shabby at this price. So £77,500 for that 8.3-litre V10 engine. Seems a bit steep.
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Originally Posted by Slicks
