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Now that Bob Lutz is lounging on the beach and catching early-bird specials (between Lotus board meetings and GM dog-and-pony shows), it’s good to know that there are still a few good men left to sprinkle The Detroit News with a few double-take-inspiring quotes. Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics is a reliable source of controversial gems, and thanks to one particularly context-free quotation, he’s provided the perfect place to kick off an age-old debate: Vette or Viper. But Hall wasn’t talking about either car’s performance, instead forwarding the thesis that:
Dodge used the Viper better as a halo vehicle for the brand than Chevy ever did with the Corvette
Which is an interesting assertion indeed, given that the ‘vette is bathed in pedigree and sells 10k-30k more units each year. And though the Viper makes sense as a halo for the Ram pickup line, Dodge’s second-best-seller is the Caravan… and the Viper helps minivan sales how exactly? But the debate doesn’t end there…
The DetN implies that Hall meant
Which is the extent of the DetN’s editorial comment on an equally provocative quote from Dodge brand boss Ralph Giles
We will use their expertise to open the performance envelope in the Viper. Fiat has an awesome ability to tune cars. I want the new Viper to be a more forgiving car to drive and accessible to more people. We’ve never had stability control on a high-performance car, which is about to happen on the new car.
What’s not explained is that Giles didn’t just up and decide to throw the Viper’s traction control-free (and traction-free) heritage on the bonfire of Fiat’s engineering vanity. The government made him do it.
So where does this leave the Viper? If Dodge’s V10 brute was a better halo vehicle than the Corvette, will it lose its power when it submits to governmental and Italian refinement? Or is Hall exaggerating its impact on the Dodge brand?
19 Comments on “Quote Of The Day: Halo Comparo Edition...”
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“The lack of stability control and a powerful engine made the Viper a unique American sports car… ”
I think he meant “suicide booth”.
I think Hall’s fellatious comment meant that, because Dodge sold way, way fewer Vipers than Chevy did ‘Vettes during Viper’s lifetime, that somehow means it’s a “halo” vehicle. It’s a cheap trick. If you only sell a small amount, you have to fall back on talking up its “exclusivity,” then you can call it a halo vehicle.
The Viper was a perfect halo for Chrysler. Just like the rest of their cars, it was rough, unrefined, the interior materials make the Rubbermaid isle at Target feel like a luxury hotel, and it was just hard to justify buying one over similar competition for the price unless you were a rabid Mopar fan.
That said, GM’s inability to capitalize better on the Corvette’s iconic position and recent racing success is pretty sad. Yeah, Chrysler’s best selling vehicle is a minivan but Chevrolet’s is a pickup truck… what does that have in common with a 2-seat sports car? I’d guess that few people interested in Corvettes paid any attention to the rest of Chevy’s passenger car line.
This is true, and it’s an argument some us made way back in TTACs history: that the Corvette as a halo doesn’t make sense for Chevy because it doesn’t really reflect on anything else they make, save (possible) the Cobalt SS, with which it shares nothing.
In that sense the Viper does work better as a halo for Dodge than the Corvette does for Chevy. It embodies the brand’s attributes better. So did/does the NSX and GT-R.
This is why when people whinge about Toyota needing a new Supra, it’s important to remember that Toyota’s halo car—that is, the car that exemplifies the brand—has been either the Corolla or the Prius. A new Supra does exactly nothing for Toyota, much as the Corvette does very little for the rest of Chevrolet.
It embodies the brand’s attributes better.
You are forgetting about the engine. The Corvette is the torch-bearer for the SBC.
I’ve been asked roughly a thousand times if one of my Pontiacs has “the Corvette engine”.
The CTS-V, ’94-’96 B-body, F-body, Zeta Camaro, G8, SSR, GTO, LS4, Trailblazer SS, and I’m sure several other GM vehicles have touted that their engine is the same (or based on) what is used in the Corvette.
@ajla
Very good point, and certainly a technique that Dodge couldn’t use, other than the brief V-10 truck engine that was only partially related to the viper lump.
Small Block Chevy V8 may in fact be world renowned, and probably worthy of it. Even if they STILL use pushrods.
I’ve been asked roughly a thousand times if one of my Pontiacs has “the Corvette engine.
Yes, but those buyers were probably going to buy Chevrolets anyway. How does the Corvette help move Cruzes, Traverses and Malibus to non-GM intenders? It doesn’t, not really.
Uh-oh. You uttered the V-word. Cue the clueless.
(Well, I tried to post this as a general top-level comment, but TTAC’s comment system is still somewhat… quirky.)
@psar:
Yes, but those buyers were probably going to buy Chevrolets anyway.
You are probably right. However, they were going to buy Chevrolets/GM because the Corvettes’ engines are so great.
If the Corvette wasn’t around doing GM’s powertrain PR those people could very well end up driving a Chrysler HEMI or Ford Modular/Coyote.
And, these weren’t GM-only loyalists I’m talking about- loyalists would know all about what engine I had without talking to me.
_________
How does the Corvette help move Cruzes, Traverses and Malibus to non-GM intenders? It doesn’t, not really.
Offer a V8 in the Malibu and Traverse. The Malibu V6 already gets mileage equal to the 4-spd LS4 Grand Prix and HiPer strut should be able to handle the torque steer. GM just seems unwilling to accept that every remaining brand within that company is heavily tied to the V8 engine.
With the Cruze, who says a “halo car” needs to work perfectly for every vehicle? The GT-R you mentioned doesn’t really help to sell Versas or Frontiers. The Prius is a poor halo for the Tundra.
@psarhjinian
Even the boss of Toyota is lamenting the absence of a Supra in his company’s lineup, so… halo car or not, having one is good for the corporate ego.
I think it is correct. All cars in the Dodge lineup shared some design elements, even the Caravan and Stratus used to have a front end that somehow reminded a bit about the Viper. Mostly the crosshair grille but I feel the linup in the 90’s was one of the better design-wise (well, the 90’s did su** in every other way when it comes to cars, so it was an easy win). The Corvette don’t (well, since 1963) seem to share much at all with it’s ‘siblings’ in the GM family. And judging by the crude mechanicals of the original Viper I think it is quite obvious that they never meant it to be anything else, unlike for example the PTCruiser or Prowler (which failed badly in almost every way).
Edit; a more refined Viper with a screaming twin cam Fiat engine might sound like fun (like a unreliable cheap S2000 ) , allthough it was the immense torque that made it famous…
I certainly agree that the Viper was a better Halo car. The point of a halo car being that you can impress people without feeling like you need to sell a ton of them. I my mind, Viper increased the brand recognition of Dodge, and maybe even chrysler, whereas the Vette increases the brand recognition of only the Vette. Note that it has pretty much always been a vette badge, not a chevy bowtie, on the vette, whereas the Viper was always the Dodge Viper.
Looking at other Halo cars such as the NSX, the SLS or the new Lexus LF-A, you can see that it was never about the sales of that car. How much is Lexus losing on every LF-A they sell? It is about selling IS’s to people who can see some of the LF-A technology in it. 200 people will buy the Halo, but everytime someone sees one on the street, they will say “damn. Lexus is cool. I should think about a Lexus because they are so cool” Far fewer folks will be looking at 50 years of ubiquitous Vettes and saying that chevys must be cool cars if they made that.
If making a Viper safer makes it more ubiquitous, it will be a mistake. If chevy wanted to make a Halo car, they would make the LS1 something that is branded as a chevy, not a corvette.
Halo cars should provide engineering and manufacturing test beds, at best, for new safety and performance technologies, since the price cachet of the nameplate can provide margin cover for the expense of these new technologies before they are eventually rolled out to the “mass production” cars.
Can’t think of a single piece of tech that came from eithr the ‘Vette or the Viper into Chevy or Dodge production vehicles, except maybe the throttle body injection from the ‘Vette engines to other chevy engines…and maybe some brake technology or metallurgy in making certain components.
Which renders the idea of a modern halo car largely moot.
In my world, safety and tech would be intro’d in the larger, more expensive brands or nameplates…and migrate down to the small cars when economies of scale and VA/VE kick in….and lower cost manufacturing techniques would debut in the smaller B and C cars and migrate upward to the larger cars to improve their margins and cost competitiveness in the market place….and the nexus of those two “lines” would merge in the midsize C and D sized platforms which would combine the best of the safety and performance tech with the low-cost VA/VE ideas to make the highest volume, lowest cost, best equipped value proposition for all OEM’s….
Mark,
I think the C5 Vette was one of the pioneers of using hydroformed steel as frame members, something which all the big pickups use now.
The Viper utilized several different (unusual for automotive) plastic forming and bonding processes for various body panels. They must have had some relevance for the tacky-plasticky interiors in the rest of the lineup.
The Viper, particularly in final, 600hp form, was my favorite car ever.
In this minute-long video, I’m in a Viper droptop following a Rolex GT-winning driver in an Audi R8. Even though I don’t know the track, even though I miss a shift, even though I’m purposely dicking around, the Viper simply eats up the R8 to the point that I have to back off a few times.
There’s also the old adage about familiarity and contempt. The Vette has just been around too long and through far too many mediocre versions to throw off the rep. It’s past halo stage and into mainstream.
In actuality, the greatest halo vehicle the General has right now is the Volt.
A Dodge salesman once told me that an absurd percentage of Vipers were wrecked on the way home from a dealership. He gave the exact percentage, but I’ve forgotten it. I think it was something like 40%.
The basic thing is that the Viper was a halo car and fed both the brand image and speedtinged fantasies. It was expensive, certainly, but even being exceedingly wealthy didn’t mean it wouldn’t kill you in a hurry if you didn’t know how to control a nanny-free monster. They put it in video games, they made models of it, they sent it to events, and mainly they made sure it was placed in the hands of a few people that could show off what it could do in front of cameras. If they didn’t manage to do that, people may wonder what the point of all that awesomeness was.
The Corvette’s a different car, and I don’t think GM’s ever had much trouble selling them. Most of the ones I see are in slow cruising mode (although my favorite scene was seeing a leisure-suit, fake perm and gold chain guy behind the wheel of a Corvette as a high-haired, high-heeled, shortskirted woman was pushing it to the side of the road, in winter). It also has a culture that’s been built up for 50 years. The ZR-1 is certainly a different beast and a Viper equivalent, but its image at least trickles down to other Corvettes, whereas there’s not much else Viperlike in the Dodge lineup.
Ooooooo…neato…. slot cars!!!!
The YMCA in downtown San Diego not far from the Broadway pier had a BIG multi-lane slot car track in the basketball court. Pert-near filled the entire space.
A free-standing booth-like open part-time shacklet contained a variety of slot car related goodies; from entire cars to hand controllers to super-powerful high-cost electrical motors to a bunch of other nifty keen goodies.
We feed the quarter-eating power allowers regularly as up to eight racers zoomed at what one math-able driver determined to be upwards of 60 real mph on the longest straight-away.
The real pros even placed a glue-like sticky speed-eating substance upon the track immediately before curves to allow last-second slow-downs and full speed until the last possible moment.
Quite scientific in its way and lots of fun.
This was the post-1960s slot care craze era so the huge crowds of the past were gone.
Doubt if the track is still there but it would be groovy and really boss if it still existed.
What was this article about?
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Found a pic of the track!!!!!!!
http://www.rogueriver.tzo.com/Gallery/USS_Thomaston/images/YMCASlotCarTrack.jpg
I just feel it would be appropriate to mention that the Viper has for the last 15 years been too Dodge the same as what the Corvette was to Chevrolet in the 50’s and 60’s. Give it 30 years more of development end evolution, and then we can see if it gets as good as the Corvette (and as ‘normal’ and ‘mainstream’ as the Corvette )
None of them will ever be the Halo car the Mustang is anyway ;)