Have you ever seen a daily-driven Dodge Viper? I hadn’t either until yesterday when, in Santa Monica, California, I stumbled upon the roughest roadworthy supercar I’ve ever seen. Here’s a look at this beat-to-hell first-generation Dodge Viper, whose owner I have a deep respect for.
A major downside of supercars is that they’re typically too impractical and valuable to drive each day, which is a shame because they’re such a joy to whip around. The owner of this Dodge Viper that I spotted last night, though, clearly lives by their own rules, as the rough shape of the supercar makes it clear that this thing is a daily driver and not a garage queen.
I actually spotted this Viper shortly after seeing a mint condition 20-year-old Honda CR-V, leading me to wonder if I’m living in some kind of alternate universe. And an amazing alternate universe, because for years I have lamented how important, high-volume cars for the masses are rarely preserved while less culturally important sports cars that are awesome to drive are rarely driven.
The owner of this Viper gets it:
It’s a first-gen Viper that I spotted in a Santa Monica parking garage, and right away I noticed a bit of a “cateye” — the fiberglass hood had cracked in such a way that it appeared to add a little taper to the outside of one of the Viper’s headlights.
Those headlights, by the way, are thoroughly faded, and they don’t seem to fit quite right in their housings (which by the way, are surrounded by plenty of just-not-quite-right touch-up paint):
There was quite a bit of this not-quite-a-color-match touch-up paint, in part, because this Viper is covered in scrapes and bruises and cracks. And I mean covered:
The passenger’s side of the front bumper has been through some stuff, and much of the turn signal lens just isn’t present:
Here’s some not-quite-right touch-up paint on the front right “fender”:
Here are some scuffs that appear to be either from a black car’s bumper or from a tire:
The mirrors are thoroughly scratched:
The rear trunk lid has a big touched-up crack in it:
The passenger’s side exhaust appears to have hit something, with the surrounding black paint thoroughly scuffed:
And I’m not entirely sure what’s going on near the front of the driver’s side exhaust pipe — did it melt the surrounding trim? Is that what’s going on here? Why is all this white?
The paint’s clearcoat is peeling:
And each rather filthy wheel has had its fair share of curb run-ins:
Then there’s the interior, whose seats are covered in duct tape and whose speakers are missing their grilles:
This Viper, outfitted with dealer plates, is possibly the most amazing Viper I’ve ever seen. It’s actually being driven, like the car-gods intended. Is this owner probably having to make major compromises just to get around? Sure. There’s not a lot of room in a Viper. Is the vehicle worth a lot less than if it had been stored in a garage? Definitely.
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But a garage queen is just artwork, and a daily driver is an actual car. Much respect to whoever this is who has decided they want their supercar to be an actual car.
All the comments about how this is not “daily driven” but in fact abused and neglected need to remember that this was written by DT.
A man who sees a three wheeled jeep with the missing wheel on a seat inside it and wants to buy it.
Speaking of DT and rusty jeeps, what happened to the kittens?!
He’s trying to train them to be ring bearers at the big wedding.
Dealer plates!? That car hasn’t been registered in YEARS.
There is a big difference in a car ‘actually being driven’ and a car ‘actually being driven in to stationary objects’.
I actually drive my cars, but I don’t feel the need to effing bounce them off kerbs and guardrails and whatever else is in my way. It is possible to look after a car, and drive it everyday at the same time.
It is amazing how much damage there is but seemingly no real major accident damage. Death by a thousand cuts, but this seems to still be staying off it’s death bed. I wonder what will be the repair that eventually takes this thing out of service?
Here’s its 206,000 mile twin out in Colorado: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBq2YY1JkBg/?img_index=1
Take any car that’s this difficult to operate and extremely expensive to repair, give it to an average driver of average means to operate it every day, and maybe this is what you’ll have after 30 years.
The damage seems a reflection of the difficulty to operate and expense to fix.
In LA traffic, no less!
I’ve never driven a Viper and I am a person of average means. I bet I could have one for decades and it would never look this bad. Although, I wash/vac my cars weekly and pay to have scratches and dents repaired and maintenance done. If I have to use a vehicle to get to work to sustain my livelihood, it gets taken care of, no matter the cost.
One of the big cheeses at work commutes in his McLaren something or other. All I know is it’s bright orange, fast, and loud. He applied black stickers to the hood to dress it up as a jack o lantern for Halloween. Mad respect. It makes me so happy to see fancy cars being let loose in the wild as their makers intended.
If you are lucky you get that car that just nickles and dimes you. Never a repair too expensive that you say it just isn’t worth it. Regular maintenance and don’t worry about how it looks and eureka you have this.
I have to respect the fact that the owner isn’t even attempting to hide the duct tape with a cheap set of seat covers.
Absolutely no f**ks given.
David – tell me you got the VIN. We need someone with a free Carfax account to run the history on this. It will either be chock full of interesting tidbits or completely empty. No in-between.
Ha, reminds me of my first car. Got a 1960 Maserati 3500 GT convertible. It was in really great mechanical condition, but somebody had stolen the windows and door handles , (replaced with late 60s ford door handles!), the paint was like chalk. The interior looked like it had been parked in the rain with the top off. The tires it needed cost as much as the car did, but it was a glorious thing to drive. It was arguably the first supercar, but nobody wanted old Maseratis or Ferraris back then and they were dirt cheap.
I wonder whatever happened to it. It looked exactly like the one George Clooney is posing with and those Omega watch ads except beat to shit.
Having driven the Viper that my otherwise Corvette-obsessed uncle owned for a minute, I admire the dedication of anyone who would drive one of these enough to get it into this state. Respect.
Though it always amazes me when expensive cars are allowed to get so derelict. How many owners has this poor thing had?
That’s not driven, that’s abused. Some inbred lowlife beat up his wife but she wouldn’t shut the hell up so she had it coming. Why do you make me hit you?
Previous owners were getting it ready for off-road conversion; don’t believe me?
Look up Superfast Matt on youtube.
All hail the algorithm
Honestly it has held up better than other 90’s-era Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth vehicles.
When was the last time you saw normal daily Mopar cars like an Intrepid, Neon, LHS, etc. I haven’t seen any of those in ages and assume they have returned to the earth.
There’s a lot of them where I live. LHSes, LeBarons, Neons, Durangos, Caravans, 300Ms… There’s two Dodge Stealths lurking around in various parking lots throughout the day. About the only thing missing are the “cloud” cars, and I’m sure that’s because the drivetrains fell apart.
Where do you live? Because even here in God’s Waiting Room, FL, where everything 90’s goes to die with their elderly last owners, Chrysler products of that era are so rare that my head snaps around like I have seen a Bugatti Veyron.
Where I am from in Maine, it was a race between the rust and the mechanicals dying.
West Virginia. Where we’re always ten years behind and nobody has the money to get with the times.
You must have amazing mechanics up there.
A few months ago there was a woman I saw in a Wal-Mart parking lot daily driving a fifteen year old Maserati Quattroporte, so I guess so, otherwise that thing would be a home for squirrels by now.
Meh, there are plenty of those around here. All it takes is money and willingness to spend it.
I saw a mint cirrus in a Walmart parking lot yesterday, it was amazing to see in such good condition up close, I always see them on the road but they’re usually driven by so you can’t get that good of a look at them
It should be noted that this Viper is approximately 30 years old. Based on the hood design, wheels, sidepipes and the lack of exterior door handles, it is a 1995 model year or older. Having said that, the more ordinary 90’s Mopars were probably scrapped when needed repairs cost more than the car was worth, rather than the point at which the car was totally worn out or rusted out. Even in the current condition, this Viper is probably worth at least $15-20k.
Yesterday, you’d be amazed at the number of them still rolling around
One of my college classmates had a Plymouth Breeze in which one of the plugs stripped out of the block. He attempted to put it back in by taping around the threads then taping OVER it with almost a rolls worth of duct tape. Upon starting the car with the hood up he fired the sparkplug to the moon. He still attempted to drive it home on 3 cylinders sounding like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I nearly crashed laughing so hard following him through the cloud of smoke and commotion.
I think this thing was crashed and repaired multiple times. The front bumper looks like it was put back on after the thing ran over a sidewalk curb and the rear and sides show the same kind of damage that would occur if the car spun out and ended up in a ditch or rolling through brush backwards.
This wasn’t daily driven. Somebody tried to kill this car. More than once.
I’ve always heard that this car tries to kill its drivers, so it had it coming, I guess?
Yep – the way the headlights are sitting is another clue that this thing has been munched pretty hard at least once. I’d guess that was a separate incident from the car spinning into a ditch.
Im 99% sure this is the same car Kristen Lee wrote a story about on The Old Site.
I’ll echo some other comments.. this has gone past the admirable daily usage and verges on neglect. I love the fact it’s been used and continues to be but damn man, at least wipe the thing down and buy some seat covers.
I love the dings, scratches and chips but even a 10 minute hit wish a hose, sponge and tire shine would make this thing INFINITELY cooler.
Is it driven by a courier ?
Uber Eats
This goes beyond daily driver use and crosses over into straight-up neglect. I have a 30 year old BMW and it’s in far nicer shape than this, with decent paint, no major body damage, clean wheels, etc. You can daily drive a car without beating the crap out of it.
I can finally make a useful post so I signed-up!
He’s my ‘neighbor’ who lives a street away from me. The owner is a character. He’s an older guy who lives south of Santa Monica. At one time, he could be found hanging-out in the outdoor seating areas of the local bars and restaurants in Venice with his Father and usually a parrot. I haven’t seen his Father in a while or the parrot but I saw him tooling around one of the residential side streets in Venice a week or so ago.
Apparently, he owns (or once owned) a dealership and he is the original owner of that Viper. It’s got the mileage to match the ‘patina’ and I am not sure the car regularly sees speeds over 25mph.
I drive a 20 year old Camry that was sandblasted by a hurricane before I got it. It’s got 230k miles and I’m a rotund dude with an addiction to janky taco trucks and no sense of pride when it comes to what I own.
And my Camry is dramatically better condition than this Viper. Heck, even the bumpers have less damage than this Viper.
This vehicle isn’t daily driven, but regularly abused. I’m just shocked it isn’t on blocks outside a doublewide.
That is the power of simplicity. No sensors, no ABS, no adjustable suspension, no power anything, barely even all the tech available in the mid-90s so much less to go wrong. I have always considered these the car that will likely outlive most other modern cars due to this. Unfortunately, things can still go wrong. I know a guy who has a first gen GTS, yes, the sweet blue w/ white stripes and bubble roof for helmet clearance) and while warming up in his garage, the airbags blew out. Luckily, he was not in the car – the force blew out the rear window. Airbags for these are almost non-existent. This, along with some unique rubber parts, will be the parts needed to keep them on the road long term that might be hard to get.
When you get down to it, a Viper is sort of a HD truck with a tiny body. The engine is the 5.8L V8 with two extra cylinders and a very mild tune. I think the transmission is from a HD truck and the guts of the rear end are good old tough Dodge engineering back from the 60s when Dodge did built some of the most durable powertrains out there.
I expect this powertrain runs fine. I expect the handling is janky with worn and bent parts, but given that first gen Vipers were a bit homicidal to begin with, it likely isn’t that noticeable unless you are going from a well treated example.
It’s still likely a fun as ride and only something like a Camaro or Mustang or perhaps Corvette (all sharing parts with pickups) could take the abuse this thing has been through and still be willing to ask for more.
Yeah, trucks have side windows, outside door handles, and probably some other luxury frippery that I can’t remember and neither does this Viper.
This makes my 21 year old daily driver Civic look like a garage queen, this isn’t daily driver abuse, this Viper has seen some serious shit.
That’s about the condition most cars I buy are in. Somewhere out there is a C8 Corvette that someone is beating the crap out of, and in 20 years it will be mine.
I would buy this, put some cheap-ass Recaro knock-off racing seat in it with some belts, and track the ever-living fuck out of it. If you slide it into a wall or spin all the mains who gives a shit. Leave it there for the track workers to sort out.
Not quite the same but I knew a guy in the early 00’s who had about 220K on his NSX. He drove the thing back and forth between multiple states, constantly.
I appreciate the sentiment of this article, I really do, but “daily driver” doesn’t necessarily mean “treated like shit”. You can drive a car every day and not, for example, scrape your rims on every curb in existence.
Especially not the rims of your old valuable high performance car.
Well you have control of what you are doing but the other driver, flora, and fauna? Sometimes it ain’t your fault.
Little dings, chips and things like that, sure – disagree on carelessness issues like running a car into curbs, that’s pure laziness.