ACR comes in 2nd in Ultimate Track Test

[RTTTTed]

Thanks Warfang, it's nice to know that a few of us notice the BS and don't suck it up.

There may be a couple stock cars that are faster than my Viper, but their cost is equivalent to a half dozen Vipers.

Want your Viper extremely fast? Add a 200hp Nitrous kit - done. Add a Roe sc (well under 10K) and go chase the new Vipers, or heavily modify your Viper and kick all comers.

I spoke to a Ferrari owner at VCA Kelowna weekend and he said he likes his Ferrari more than his Viper, but at $17,000 tune up cost every 15,000mi. he usually drives his viper. His Ferrari is also slower than his stock Gen 2.

To each his own. Fast = Viper.


Ted

[Viper X]

No brag, cause I'm not that good, but my GTS with some suspension work and VRL slicks pulled 1.3 Gs at CA Speedway (before aero) in the turn on the right side of the drawing.

If they only pulled 1.16 G's average, they weren't pushing it.

I also pulled 1.3 G's in Riverside at Buttonwillow, sans aero.

This track, CA Speedway, can be a bit scary as you can get pretty close to the wall at speed.

Dan

[cyaford]

It would've been nice to see a more fair comparison. I guess I'm the only unbiased person here, but this bothered me:

"It must be said that the ACR was the only car that arrived with its own crew chief, who optimized the suspension settings for each venue. But that's consistent with the ACR's role as a street-legal track car."

I'd prefer to see what it would do from the factory without any tweaks. All cars ran with their factory tires:

Gallardo - Dot Legal Competition Tires (PZero Corsa)
Viper ACR - Dot Legal Competition Tires (Pilot Sport Cup)
GT-R - "Cold Climate*" Summer Tires (Dunlop 600s)
911 GT2 - Dot Legal Competition Tires (Pilot Sport Cup)
R8 - Max Performance Summer (Pzero**)
Z06 - Max Performance Summer Runflats (Eagle F1 SC)
DBS - Max Performance Summer (Pzero**)
M3 - Max Performance Summer (Pilot Sport PS2**)

If I were Chevy(RUNFLATS!!??) and Nissan, I would've definitely changed tires, but people would've called foul.

How's all that for Devil's advocate?

[RTTTTed]

Yes, the new Viper would have been very dangerous with runcraps, like the Gen 3s. Dangerous tires.

Ted

[black mamba1]

Magazines profits are down. So they print what sells. I read in a compact sports car mag today how an modded Evo beat an 08 Viper by 3.5 seconds in a road race. They went on to talk about how slow the Gen 4 Viper was, and that the stock Evo might even take it on the track. Guys, that is total bull**** and everyone knows it.

Mags are ripe with propaganda to keep all the car manufacturers happy and the dollars flowing in. Its gotten to the point where not only are the rags not credible, they are not even interesting on many levels. Bottom line is...

Lline em up and race em yourself.

[Y2K5SRT]

Originally Posted by cyaford

It would've been nice to see a more fair comparison. I guess I'm the only unbiased person here, but this bothered me:

"It must be said that the ACR was the only car that arrived with its own crew chief, who optimized the suspension settings for each venue. But that's consistent with the ACR's role as a street-legal track car."

Actually, the ACR owner's manual recommends certain settings for the track - settings that any ACR owner can do without a lot of prior skill sets. Now do you think that the magazine writers/drivers would have adjusted those settings? Of course not. The idea was simply to take advantage of the ACR's ability to adjust the factory settings. And that's something few, if any, of the other cars could do - or they would have brought their own crew of one.

[Snakester]

In this company the ACR Viper did very well.

It flat out beat everything on two tracks, and came very close on the third.
But like the Z06, it's got very tall 5th and 6th gears which is done for better fuel economy and has a trade off for quicker acceleration over 140MPH, which took it's toll on the last track test.

The 560-4 has a base price of $201K, but I'd be surprised if any can be found at MSRP. I was also surprised to see how much faster it is than the previous Gallardo, even the Superlegerra, which was well off of the ACR's pace in previous track tests.

The GTR is again surprising to hold up so well on the track compared to the heavy hitting (and far more pricey) cars that it competed well against here. Kudos.

The GT2 actually did well overall, but it has not seemed to get good reviews, especially compared to it's less powerful little racing brother GT3, which costs much less.

The M3, EVO, and Exige were out of their element only when compared to the heavy hitters in this group, but each did well on their own (especially relative to price and market). However the M3's true competitor in this group was the GTR, which frankly blew it away on the track.

The R8 is always reviewed glowingly and did well here, but is in need of a power boost (which will be coming soon enough).

I'm really glad to see Dodge support the Viper by providing SRT engineers for magazine testing.
This is a common practice by Chevy, Porsche, Ferrari and many others on most comparison tests, and it shows that Dodge is really supporting the ACR!

[Warfang]

Originally Posted by Y2K5SRT

Actually, the ACR owner's manual recommends certain settings for the track - settings that any ACR owner can do without a lot of prior skill sets. Now do you think that the magazine writers/drivers would have adjusted those settings? Of course not. The idea was simply to take advantage of the ACR's ability to adjust the factory settings. And that's something few, if any, of the other cars could do - or they would have brought their own crew of one.

Frankly, I think Dodge SHOULD send a rep or two to all of these comparison tests... keeps the competition (and the biased mag writers) honest. Can you imagine what these scores would have been like if there wasn't a pro-Viper rep there?

Seriously... they mention that Dodge had people there to make sure the car was used AS INTENDED, but never once have I read about the ringers Nissan and Chevy brought out for their evaluation.

[AFL in NJ]

Hello All,

I finally got around to writing the editors at Car and Driver (editors@caranddriver.com) and sent them the following:

Dear Car and Driver,

Okay, you've got me perplexed.....I see your cover says that you're testing the ultimate street legal track car and inside I see the Viper ACR wins EVERY acceleration category, braking and handling (incl. roadholding and lane change) and above all it was the fastest by 4 seconds a lap over everything else....yet it didn't win. So I start looking at how you tabulate the scores and you awarded points for a back seat.....have you spent too much time in a minivan?

If I'm buying a track car that I can still drive to the track and out to cruise a few evenings a week, there is a clear cut winner here and it isn't the Nissan. I'd rather put the Nissan 5.4 seconds back per lap each and every lap of the race, which by rough calculations is about what....13 car lengths for a single lap? Ouch!!

Also, you did the Porsche a dis-service as you tested the GT2, which doesn't have a back seat (since obviously that's a concern to you when you're buying a dual-purpose car such as this), why didn't you test the 911 Turbo...it has a token back seat?

Please do the readers a favor and change the title to comparisons such as this to something that reflects you scoring system such as: "Another subjective-oriented waste of page space" and at least I won't be wondering if you've just lost your balls by being married too long.

Oh yeah, your top gear passing tests are a useless statistic as I don't even think I can get my Viper ACR down to 30 mph in 6 gear...I'd likely grab 1st and blast to 50 so fast your timer would injure him/herself, and 50 -70 would be nicely accomplished in 2nd gear.

If you do this test again when the new ZR1 comes out, please don't skew the test results by scoring cup holders, massaging seats, or multi-colored dash-based laser shows, a furry dash pad option, dingle-balls on the door pillars as part of the decision criteria...make it about lap times and handling and performance.

Regards,
Aaron F. Lukianow
VCA Venom Member

Regards,
Aaron

[Warfang]

Originally Posted by AFL in NJ

Hello All,

I finally got around to writing the editors at Car and Driver (editors@caranddriver.com) and sent them the following:

Dear Car and Driver,

Okay, you've got me perplexed.....I see your cover says that you're testing the ultimate street legal track car and inside I see the Viper ACR wins EVERY acceleration category, braking and handling (incl. roadholding and lane change) and above all it was the fastest by 4 seconds a lap over everything else....yet it didn't win. So I start looking at how you tabulate the scores and you awarded points for a back seat.....have you spent too much time in a minivan?

If I'm buying a track car that I can still drive to the track and out to cruise a few evenings a week, there is a clear cut winner here and it isn't the Nissan. I'd rather put the Nissan 5.4 seconds back per lap each and every lap of the race, which by rough calculations is about what....13 car lengths for a single lap? Ouch!!

Also, you did the Porsche a dis-service as you tested the GT2, which doesn't have a back seat (since obviously that's a concern to you when you're buying a dual-purpose car such as this), why didn't you test the 911 Turbo...it has a token back seat?

Please do the readers a favor and change the title to comparisons such as this to something that reflects you scoring system such as: "Another subjective-oriented waste of page space" and at least I won't be wondering if you've just lost your balls by being married too long.

Oh yeah, your top gear passing tests are a useless statistic as I don't even think I can get my Viper ACR down to 30 mph in 6 gear...I'd likely grab 1st and blast to 50 so fast your timer would injure him/herself, and 50 -70 would be nicely accomplished in 2nd gear.

If you do this test again when the new ZR1 comes out, please don't skew the test results by scoring cup holders, massaging seats, or multi-colored dash-based laser shows, a furry dash pad option, dingle-balls on the door pillars as part of the decision criteria...make it about lap times and handling and performance.

Regards,
Aaron F. Lukianow
VCA Venom Member

Regards,
Aaron

F#@k them. Maybe Viper magazine needs to stop pussyfootin around start doing their own comparisons. I don't care to read about 90% of the crap they write about.

[AFL in NJ]

Dear Warfang,

You're exactly right, I tried the minor insults about them driving too many minivans and that comment about losing their balls, but you're right, they won't print it, they're useless.

Regards,
Aaron

[RTTTTed]

Watching Speed Channel today and I noticed that Top Gear and Supercars Exposed, they were very careful to do all their comparisons to Ferrari, Lambo,etc. and never mentioned the Viper (it would have had the fastest times if they would have mentioned them.

Their comparison has the R8 up to 4.0 0-60 from the other tests of actual cars that only went 4.6.

They said that the SLR is "the fastest automatic car in the world" ... so much for the vette.

Ted

[Kai SRT10]

I lowered my 5th and 6th gears. Makes a big difference in how hard the car pulls at high speeds.

Originally Posted by Viper X

Cool article.

Having driven CA Speedway, now called Auto Club Speedway, I can tell you that the Viper transmission / diff is not well geared for the oval.

The car's redline / max rpms limit the use of 4th gear much of the time on this track which tops at about 160 mph. When you shift to 5th gear, you end up kinda low in the rpm range. If I had a wish for an improvement of the new ACR it would be to lower the 5th gear ratio in the trans, as many road racers do in their Vipers on fast tracks. I have some trouble at Willow Springs in my modded GTS as I end up in 5th gear for turn 8 and in the front straight. The car doesn't pull that well at the bottom of 5th gear with the stock gear ratio.

If not a 5th gear change, SRT could lower the rear gear ratio to 3.33 but that may mess with the EPA ratings.

In any case, this is one neat thing that SRT could do with this car (lower 5th gear) without much cost of impact.

Dan