The Dodge Viper RT/10 is the car that should never have made it out of a corporate design studio, and Chrysler built it anyway. Conceived in 1988–89 as a modern AC/Shelby Cobra — championed by Bob Lutz and Tom Gale, with Carroll Shelby himself involved — it went on sale in January 1992 with an 8.0-litre pushrod V10 making 400 hp, at a time when the Corvette was making around 300. The spec sheet is not only defined by what's missing, but by what's there: no ABS, no traction control, no airbags, no exterior door handles, no interior door locks, vinyl zip-out windows and a canvas top. Air conditioning was not even available until 1994.
"SR I" (sometimes written SR1) is the internal Chrysler chassis code for the first generation, 1992–1995. The RT/10 roadster was the only body style offered for the entire run. The SR II that replaced it in 1996 shares the same basic chassis and is best understood as a major update rather than a redesign, though it is the generation that fixed most of the SR I's rough edges and added the GTS coupe.
Roughly 5,988 across four model years — about 285 in 1992, 1,043 in 1993, 3,083 in 1994 and 1,577 in 1995. Chrysler never published an authoritative total in a single source, so these figures come from enthusiast registries and should be treated as close approximations. The 285 figure for 1992 is corroborated independently and is the most reliable of the four.
No. The GTS coupe — the "double bubble" — did not arrive until 1996, which is the second generation (SR II).
It is based on the Chrysler LA-family truck V10 architecture, but the shared hardware is limited. The block is iron and the heads are aluminum, with head development assisted by Lamborghini, which Chrysler owned at the time.
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