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| The Viper ACR is mind-blowingly quick on the open road. That said precise steering input is as necessary as a soft touch on the throttle to keep it in the safety zone. (Photo: DaimlerChrysler) |
Press the throttle too quickly and the rear tires will light up in an NHRA-style smoke show while the rear end zigzags to find traction. That said it'll zig you right into a ditch if you're not careful. For this reason I feather the accelerator initially and allow the 8.0-L V10's 500 lb-ft of torque (490 lb-ft in 2000 models) to nudge me forward. Incidentally, when introduced the ACR produced 450-hp but in 2001 460 was available. This example just happens to be a 2002, and therefore gets all the juice.
And juice it has. What an adrenaline rush! It picks up speed at such an alarming rate that I literally scare myself - normally hard for me to do. Sixty mph (96.6 km/h) takes only 4.2 seconds while the 1/4-mile arrives in mere 12.3 seconds at 118.6 mph (191 km/h). That's ruddy fast!
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| Even after a full tenure the GTS based ACR looks sensational. (Photo: DaimlerChrysler) |
The rather vague feeling 6-speed shifter poses another irritation, an electronic 1-4 skip-shift feature developed to placate the federally mandated corporate average fuel economy standards. It forces the transmission to shift from first directly into fourth during low-speed driving. Really! Fortunately there are ways to modify it to act properly, but alas, this isn't my car. I found the best way around it was to go fast, a simple but nevertheless entertaining solution. All said it shifts into 2nd fairly easily either below 22 km/h (14 mph) or above 34 km/h (21 mph), so under most conditions it reacts properly.