The Dodge Viper is about as close to an allegory for the American 1990s as any car can get. The 1990s were an optimistic time packed with bright colors and extreme (x-treme) ideologies, and there’s nothing more optimistic than strapping a pair of seats to an engine and ripping fat burnouts all day. In an age of high-tech prosperity Chrysler executives Bob Lutz and Lee Iacocca handed their engineers a really small check from their slush fund to develop this extremely low-tech car, according to Hagerty even telling them to keep the all-in costs under $50 million so that the project wouldn’t get flagged to the company’s bean counter accountants. Paint it a bright lemon shade of yellow, add color-matched three-spoke wheels, and a giant MKIV Supra-style basket handle wing, and you’ve got the epitome of 1990s excess. I love it so much.
Craigslist
In order to drive this car you need a LL Cool J-style red Kangol bucket hat, a pair of acid-wash denim overalls with one shoulder undone, a t-shirt depicting the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil declaring you a “100% Party Animal,” and a pair of Reebok Kamikaze II mids. Even though you can’t hear it over the exhaust note of an 8-liter V10 engine bellowing through the side-exit, you’ve got The Offspring’s “Self Esteem” cranked through the center-mounted speakers anyway. There’s a level of nostalgia here that can’t be matched by any other car, and really only nineties kids will remember.
Look at that wing
While the Viper was conceived as a no-frills experience all ate up with motor, the final product delivered to dealerships was as bold and bright as the era in which it thrived. The snake-like shape told you just how dangerous it was, but the bright colors and simplicity fooled you into a sense of security and begged you to come out and play. Forget your worries about the stock market, the president’s frequent scandalous lies, trade policy, or the rapidly shifting media landscape, it’s the 1990s again, and they didn’t have those kinds of problems back then! Climb aboard this Viper and drop the clutch, you’ll disappear in a cloud of V10-powered tire smoke.
Craigslist
This particular Viper appears to have been modified to a reasonably period-correct level, with the aftermarket wing stuck on the back there. I actually kind of like it better with the wing, it adds a level of complexity, balance, and seriousness to the design of the car that it needed. Inside the car is one modification that I would instantly undo if this car were mine, the anachronistic Alpine stereo head unit. There should almost certainly be a tape deck in the dash of this Viper, and you should keep a pencil in the glove box just in case. If you want to make this vibrant Viper yours, you can find it on Craigslist in Pittsburgh for just $48,000. I don’t think there’s anything sold in the last decade that will give you the sensations that a 1995 Viper will, and anything even approaching it would cost orders of magnitude more than $48,000. Just buy it, what’s the worst that could happen? A dot-com boom and bust?