The Viper has been the perfect halo car for Chrysler, no matter who owned the company at the time. It was brash and filled with numbers that were the stuff of legends, yet in capable hands the car could do magical things. It looked exactly like what you’d expect a cartoon hot rod to look like. It made a noise that no standard Camaro or Mustang made, it could nuke the tires off at a whim, and it wasn’t a temperamental pain in the backside like an Italian could be. And while no Viper could be called “cheap”, compared to the company it kept at the track, it was certainly in the affordable spectrum. Unfortunately, 2017 is the end of the line for the Viper. It’s sales aren’t enough to carry it and it’s in-house competition alone make a case for calling it a day, but ultimately it’s safety that is killing off the snake. In September, side-curtain airbags become mandatory, and the Viper doesn’t have them.

So the Viper is going away. We knew this. But there is a secondary loss, and that’s the Connor Avenue Assembly Plant. Once the Viper goes bye-bye, the plant, which used to belong to Champion Spark Plugs before Chrysler bought the facility in 1995, will be shut down and shuttered, and very unlikely to come back from the dead. At least the eighty or so workers who staff the plant will be moved around to other facilities in the area, which is the least that FCA can do for the team that cranked out nearly hand-built American dream machines that recently, have been fully customizable. But when sales are in the hundreds because buyers with the cash are scared off by a manual-trans car with a widow maker reputation that causes your Porsche-loving friends to delete you off of Facebook, something has to give. At least we had the Viper…it’s amazing the wild Mopar lived as long as it did.

Raise a toast…