1971 Dodge Challenger on 2040-cars

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eGarage interviews a couple with 65 Vipers

Owning multiple vehicles can be a hassle worth enjoying if you're willing to spend the time and the money required to acquire and maintain them. But when it's hard to make ends meet while underused valuable hunks of metal, plastic and rubber sit happily taking up garage space, journeys into the depths of other people's well-developed automotive obsessions will either bring you and your cars closer together, or compel you to sell them off before you become one of those fanatics. A recent video by eGarage is one of those journeys, and it's not for the faint of heart: D'Ann and Wayne Rauh own 65 Dodge and SRT Vipers in a collection of automobiles that exceeds 100.
We're not sure if the couple has developed heat-resistant calves from stepping over Viper door sills made burning-hot by side-exhaust pipes, but we wouldn't be surprised if they did. We did learn that their obsession with the no-holds-barred sports car started in 2006 with a trip to a dealership to buy just one Viper, which goes to show how innocently car obsessions can start. But the Rauhs seem to be doing just fine - perhaps better - 64 more Vipers later.
Watch the video below for the full story and to see what eGarage claims is the world's largest Viper collection.

2015 Dodge Viper getting small increase in power

The Viper is used to being the most powerful car in the Dodge and SRT stables, but the arrival of the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat means that's no longer the case. The serpentine supercar is, however, reportedly getting a small boost in output for 2015, amounting to all of five horsepower.
The increase was uncovered by Road & Track courtesy of the SAE J1349 certification process to which Detroit's Big Three automakers submit themselves and which reports the Viper's output at 645 hp instead of the 640 it was rated at until now. There are a hundred factors that could have contributed to the relatively mild boost in output (best guess? nothing at all changed...), but we doubt anyone's going to complain about some extra horses under the hood.
The five-horsepower boost brings the Viper that much closer to the 650-hp Chevy Corvette Z06, not to mention the 707-hp Hellcat, but the Viper's impressive power-to-weight ratio ought to mean it'll have little problem keeping up in a straight line - which is just one of the reasons why Chrysler won't shoe-horn the Hellcat into the Viper: as R&T points out, the supercharged engine is too heavy and the blower makes it too tall to fit in the Viper's engine bay.

Top torque-to-weight ratios under $100k, $50k and $25k

Horsepower may steal a lot of headlines, but the always-more-complex torque figure is often a critical one for both the workingman and the motoring playboy. The measure of rotational force represents the twist that can liquefy one's tires or haul one's horse trailer. Good stuff.
It follows then, that as with the horsepower-to-weight list that we assembled for you a few months ago, a list of cars that offer the most pound-feet with the fewest pounds to carry, is an interesting one to break down. Sure, there's a big difference in how the torque is applied from a turbocharged six-cylinder in a Swedish luxury sedan and a massive heavy-duty truck's turbo-diesel. But being the car/stat geeks that we are, we think it's kinda neat that those two vehicles rank near each other where torque and weight intersect.
As with the horsepower list, we've given you figures as pounds per every one pound-foot. Again broken down into broad price categories, we've got a mixed bag of 2014 and 2015 models here, too. Every effort has been made to select the most up-to-date prices and specs, and we've also to omitted some '14 cars that won't be re-upped after the ongoing yearly changeover.