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  #1  
Old 02-09-2008, 01:13 AM
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Cry They're killing the Viper!!

http://jalopnik.com/354292/the-dodge...-send-rd-funds
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  #2  
Old 02-09-2008, 12:03 PM
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Had to see that one coming, especially with the new CAFE regs that are coming up. GM is also talking about the Corvette taking a serious performance hit as well. The Viper had a great run, but you couldnt expect it to last forever. Chrysler probably spent a serious amount of cash on the Viper each year, and one would have to look at what they got in return. It was probably not that big of a money maker.
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  #3  
Old 02-15-2008, 02:06 AM
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Post bad thing is

if they keep it up were going to play hell tagging and driving our old rods and muscle cars. damn uncle sam
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  #4  
Old 02-15-2008, 02:48 PM
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What are you talking about? What does that have to do with the Viper being axed?
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  #5  
Old 02-15-2008, 02:56 PM
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Angry what are you talking about

hey dont take it so personal i was just saying if the regulations are going to put a stop to the gas guzzling production cars whats next.
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  #6  
Old 02-26-2008, 02:29 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vinnys63valiant View Post
hey dont take it so personal i was just saying if the regulations are going to put a stop to the gas guzzling production cars whats next.
I do not understand the gas guzzler tax!

The new Challenger will be getting the gas guzzler tax and it is suppose to get 23 MPG

My 2007 Ram gets about 16.5...yet no tax!!

Same crap with my Dad's 2006 300C SRT8, he got the tax and it gets better mileage than my truck!

Anyone care to explain?
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  #7  
Old 02-26-2008, 03:26 AM
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If your truck is a 2500/3500, it is exempt from CAFE standards.
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  #8  
Old 02-26-2008, 03:31 AM
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Nope, just a 1500 Ram.
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  #9  
Old 02-26-2008, 03:38 AM
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Biggrin

It seems that light duty trucks are exempt from the gas guzzler tax.

http://autos.qandas.com/cars-trucks/...zzler-tax.html
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  #10  
Old 02-26-2008, 09:47 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vinnys63valiant View Post
hey dont take it so personal i was just saying if the regulations are going to put a stop to the gas guzzling production cars whats next.
I wasnt taking it personally, I asked a question, thats all.
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  #11  
Old 03-02-2008, 01:16 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick View Post
It seems that light duty trucks are exempt from the gas guzzler tax.

http://autos.qandas.com/cars-trucks/...zzler-tax.html

In a nutshell, this is why the Li'l Red Express existed.

They could stuff a high performance engine exempt of a lot of emissions regulations into a truck. It was actually the quickest american production vehicle made in '78.

And yes, it makes absolutely no sense. A tail pipe is a tail pipe, but it looks good on paper. People are incredibly stupid in large devided groups.

As far as the viper goes, whatever. They were amazing cars in a lot of ways and durring their run, made the Vette look like immitation crab meat.

I'm not saddened to see high performance cars go the way of the dodo.

And if I had to crush my Charger or any of my other classics to keep from getting killed by UV rays, so be it. They are just cars. Not everything in life is about cars.

Maybe I'll convert my Charger to hydrogen someday, but in the mean time, I'm keeping a fuel injected, supercharged smallblock and an overdrive in it and I'll take it out on the nice weekends/ weekdays that I am off, whenever I want or need to while I work from home durring the rest of the week. They just started popping new full fenders and quarters out for my car as well as brand new grilles, so that's one less thing that I have to worry about babying. Practicality +1 Rarity 0.

I don't have a daily driver and I was fortunate enough to have managed my career so that I don't need one.
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  #12  
Old 03-02-2008, 01:49 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TrashedCharger View Post
I don't have a daily driver and I was fortunate enough to have managed my career so that I don't need one.
So you work from home?

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  #13  
Old 03-14-2008, 09:48 PM
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Hydrogen fueled cars really make sense(not!). Range of less than 200 miles if the entire trunk is used as a fuel tank, and how ya' gonna make the hydrogen? From electricity? Our electrical grid is operating right now at 98%...in Northern California at 115%. We can't build nukes to make juice, or use cheap clean coal, so we'll waste more natural gas to make electricity, a very poor use for a clean burning fuel, and not very effecient either. It's like the ethanol myth...takes more energy to make than it produces. But the corn lobby likes it, and we don't import cheap ethanol from Brazil...I wonder why? Food prices have gone up 30% this year, and as long as corn is used for fuel instead of food and animal feed, food prices will keep going up.
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  #14  
Old 03-18-2008, 01:12 AM
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Check out the Tesla roadster, all electric and will run with a Viper 0-60 almost. Corn ethanol is a scam yes.. but they are currently working on getting cellulosic ethanol going soon. Check out Bluefire ethanol corporation, they will use waste yard clippings and other organic waste at landfills to create fuel in California, also Colusa biomass corporation wants to do similar things with rice straw out in the central valley and elsewhere.
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  #15  
Old 03-18-2008, 01:46 AM
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Yes the Tesla is on Jay Leno's garage this week, It'll run great, for 60 miles, just about the range of the Allis-Chamler-Detroit Electrics(A-C Delco) of the turn of the century. Batteries are the problem. There is no rechargeable battery made that gives more than 12% of the energy you put into it, out again. That's the sodium-molten sulfur battery that operates at 450* F. If it's damaged and oxygen gets to it, it explodes with more force than the same weight of TNT. All the bio-mass energy sources depend on the DNA chemists coming up with an organism that will convert cellulose into alcohol very, very efficently. They might do it, but several million years of evolution puts the odds against them.(Why hasn't nature made this organism already?) Even if the chemists make the "bug", there isn't enough arible land on the North American Continent to grow enough grass and still grow food. The corn/ethanol fiasco has proven that already. Let's keep burning dead dinosaurs. It works and we know we have 2000 years supply at an 8% growth rate per year. In 1880 the New York Times said that by 1900, there would be no way to keep the streets in New York City clean of horse droppings. Well, the automobile cured that. In the same article they said it would take 200 freight trains a day to bring in hay and horse feed. Hmmm...didn't happen. The Boston Hearld said in 1945 if anyone ever detonated an atomic bomb, it would split the atmosphere of the Earth and start a chain reation that would consume the Earth. Two weeks before the first atom bomb had been tested at Trinity. Funny how the 'experts" are usually wrong. They said Jonas Salk could never develop a vaccine against polio when I was a kid. When I was 4, I got the Salk vaccine. My next-door's neighbor's oldest son, 5 years older than me had polio, and still walks with a limp 50 years later. When the need is great enough(and it's not yet) someone will come up with a new power source, just like when we went from burning wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas, to using electricity, to the next thing. It's taken over 25,000 years to get to this point. If the tree-huggers and Earth-worshippers will allow it, something else will come along. It always has.
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  #16  
Old 03-18-2008, 08:35 AM
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Ethanol is a crock, it is not efficient to produce, does not contain the same amount of energy as other fuels, which makes for bad fuel mileage, which in turn creates MORE pollution, and the pollution that it creates is worse for your lungs than the pollution created by burning fossil fuels. On top of that, we are starting to have issues with the availability of enough fresh water in this country, the aquifers out west are showing dramatic signs of being depleted, so why are we looking at a fuel source that needs such a large amount of fresh water for production? Its just another money making scheme from the "green" corporations. All we are doing is sucking up THE most important resource to produce something which isnt as good as we need it to be. We need to stop concentrating on BS tech that doesnt work, and start looking for real alternatives for the future, like fusion, and getting hydrogen fuel cells produced in a usable size (GM already has them, BMW, Honda and others do as well).
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  #17  
Old 03-18-2008, 05:13 PM
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When fuel cell cars hit the roads, I'll start shooting the drivers. Their are only two kinds of fuel cells...those that have exploded and those that are going to explode. In 17 tries with fuel cells in the Gemini and Appolo programs, NASA had three catsitrophic failures. Two in the Gemini program and the nearly disasterous one in Appolo 13. Funny, NASA doesn't use fuel cells in manned spacecraft anymore...ya' think there's a reason??? We had a fuel cell to power our satillite communications system in Nam. It was contained in a blast wall to protect us from when, not if, it exploded. Industry has concluded that fuel cells are too dangerous to have around. You can't get insurance for a fuel cell for ANY amount of money. That's why all the cell towers have desiel Onan back-up gen-sets, not fuel cells. You think it's safe to carry around a tank of liquid oxygen in your vehicle for your fuel cell? And what fuel would you use? Hydrogen? No range. Hydrazine? They shot down the spy satillite due to the hazards of it. Liquid Natural gas? No range and with LOX on-board=BOMB. Those are your fuel choices. Fuel cells are the modern equivilent of the Stanley Steamer....work fine, but they blow-up. Nobody's clamoring to bring back steam powered cars. With flash boilers and clean-burn external combustion, and turbines to power them, they'd work, except for that super-heated steam if you're in an accident...oh darn! Otto Daimler really hit on something with the internal combustion engine, that nobody's been able to improve upon in 125 years. We could develop the Chrysler turbine used in the early '60's in cars....that's still internal combustion. Wankle engines, internal combustion, deisels, Mann-cycle(6 stroke engines), Orbital two-strokes(like they use in Austrailia and Europe) are all internal combustion, and they all are lightweight(realitively), powerful and efficent, and most importantly, SAFE. In the 1880's in New York City, over a hundred people a day were killed by horses, either kicking them, rearing up, or being spooked or by run-away teams. There's about 20 people, including pedestrians killed a day now in NYC in traffic accidents, with nearly 6 times the population today. More people today are killed riding horses than riding ATV's and motorcycles COMBINED, but more people are killed snow skiing than on ATV's and motorcycles too. The Gov't combines ATV's and snowmobiles in their record keeping, BTW. Remember Christopher Reeves? He ulitmatly died from riding a horse. Give me a good, cheap, safe gasoline powered pick-up truck, thank you, and I'll probably die of old age. That's only happened in the last 100 years of history.
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  #18  
Old 03-18-2008, 06:58 PM
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Walker, calm down. Sheesh.

As far as fuel cells being dangerous goes, let me tell you this, I live literally around the corner from the GM plant that has been developing fuel cell tech for years, even been in it to do some work on their computers. In the close to, if not more than 10 years that the plant has been there, there hasnt been ONE accident with any kind of explosion or anything like you describe. Also, GM has already driven a car, powered by hydrogen, a couple of hundred miles with no issues. You should take a look at how they are doing it before you take a dump on it. Heres a link to the site about Honda's Clarity, it gives an overview of the workings of the car.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-cla...-works/v-flow/
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  #19  
Old 03-19-2008, 12:57 AM
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Well, GM can do what General Dynamics and TRW couldn't do on a cost-plus basis??? Don't think so. When GM can make an alloy engine that the main seals don't leak on, I'll be impressed. So will every mechanic in the world. GM making fuel cells is like the Chinese making them. I ain't gonna get near 'em. Yeah, and the Hindenburg being filled with hydrogen wasn't a problem either. What we ought to be doing instead of screwing around with ethanol and bio-diesel is turning West Virgiania Anthacite coal into diesel by the Frashe-Haber process like the Germans did during WWII. And you get free "producer gas"(a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) to burn to heat up more coal to turn into deisel. It's almost a no-energy input process. We could also turn the tar-sands in Alberta Canada into Syncrude(TM), a semi-refined crude oil. Or we could just drill off-shore California and Florida and not need any imported oil for 400 years. There's also off-shore oil near New York and New Jersey...wonder why we can't drill there? There's an oilman in Tulsa who would drill oil wells every quarter section of land east of town if the EPA would let him..you might have heard of him...T. Boone Pickens.
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Old 03-19-2008, 09:13 AM
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Walker, why would you just sit there and slam GM for no apparent reason. Im not a big GM guy, but they have been doing a great job with fuel cell technology for years, and for that I have to give them credit. Like I already posted and provided a link for, GM isnt the only company to do the fuel cell thing. Honda, BMW and I believe Mercedes all have working fuel cell technology and vehicles. I doubt that Chrysler is very far behind any of them either. The leaps that they have made with the technology is pretty amazing, about 6 or 7 years ago was the first time I walked into the fuel cell plant to work on their computers, and the smallest working fuel cell system they had barely fit into the bed of a Chevy Colorado pickup, now they have working fuel cell systems that take up the same amount of room in a car as the engine, gas tank and transmission. They are already using the fuel cell vehicles out in California, you can lease a Honda fuel cell car for around $500 a month. You can say what you like about it, but consumer technology today is far better than anything NASA had back in the 60s and 70s. NASA, industrial and military tech is leaps and bounds better than consumer tech. A comparison to the Hindenberg is completely rediculous, we arent talking about Hydrogen balloons.

As far as the oil supply goes, I feel like what they are doing now is a crock, you are exactly right on all of the oil that is out there untapped, but until the EPA is forced to back off, it will remain untapped. Also, we need to update and build more refineries in this country, that would help with our import needs, as much of our imports are refined product, not just crude.
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  #21  
Old 03-21-2008, 02:35 PM
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I will be talking with one of the SRT engineers guest speaker at the Ohio Viper Club Holiday Party April 5th and hope to find out the truth on this rumor.

The gas guzzler tax doesn't seem right since those that guzzle gas will be paying more each time they fill up in state and federal taxes. Let the marketplace decide what we drive, not the politicians.
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  #22  
Old 03-22-2008, 12:27 AM
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Sun Ra Kat, they were trying to copy Europe with the gas-guzzler tax. In Europe, every car has a number inside the fuel door, from 1 to whatever. They multipy the cost of your fuel by that number everytime you buy fuel. If you have a Ferrari Boxer Berliner, you may have to pay 2.5 times the pump-price. It's based on engine displacement, and 2.6L is the cut-off for "1". That's why VW's never have bigger than 2.6L engines, and 2.5L BMW's are so popular, and Toyota Camry's use a 2.6L V-6 instead of a three liter. My Masaratti Quartaporta had 1.8 on the filler flap. It was a 5L V-8. England adds a fuel economy tax on top of their allready outragous tariffs on imported cars. So you see three wheel Vauxhalls with 1.1L motors there. The French are pretty bad too. It's a way of controlling the traffic on their pitful "high-ways", and a social control too. Working people live close to work and use public transit. But Oklahoma and Kansas are bigger than all of France, and Oklahoma wider than the length of England from North to South. With some re-arrainging, all of Europe would fit inside the lower 48 states. And generally, you're not allowed to drive across Europe in a car. You have to have special permits, visas, passports, and travel papers. They want you to fly or take a train.Or better yet, stay home and spend your money in your home country.
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  #23  
Old 03-27-2008, 04:28 PM
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Sad day for the Viper, but not surprising seeing as how manufacturers have been turning toward more efficient technologies over the past decade. Although a performance icon, it isn't the most profitable vehicle in the line and today's economy really doesn't allow the freedom for Dodge to continue it. At least the rest of the Mopar line leaves a good amount of performance left though.
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  #24  
Old 03-27-2008, 10:59 PM
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I'd bet DC never made any profit off the Viper. They did it as a showpiece and advertising item and to show their "performance image". Mopar never made a cent off of Daytona 500's they claim...and it's probably true. Diamler-Benz probably loses money on every Maybach they build. Rolls-Royce was loosing money on every RR and Bentley they built before they sold the car making off to BMW and VW. Now Fiat makes money on Lambergenni's and Ferrari's and Maseratti's(since they own them all now). But they're the exception to the rule. Most luxury/ performance cars are money losers for car companies. VW makes the most of it's money on 1.3L Golf's(Rabbit's). Very popular in former Soviet bloc and breakaway republics.
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:53 AM
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^+1 Most every manufacturer has their one showpiece with its sole purpose being to create buzz. With Dodge it was the Viper. My girlfriend, could hear "Viper" and even her ears perk up. It's a good marketing tool in that the Viper alone created so much awareness for the Dodge brand. BMW did just the same with a Z8 (although we all know its awareness didn't nearly reach that of the Viper). Bottom line, it wasn't designed to turn a profit. It was a performance icon created to accent the brand image, and in that, it succeeded.
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