The Dodge Viper may have been scrapped a few years ago, but it’s still fresh in the minds of performance enthusiasts. In the world of high-revving V10 supercar engines, big 10-pot pushrods have a voice all their own. Catching the Viper pulling on the dyno is a great way to capture the essence of the machine, and that’s exactly what we’ve got in this Hoonigan video.
The car in question is the 2014 Viper GTS. It carries a pounding version of the 8.4-liter V10, producing 640 horsepower (477 kilowatts) at a relatively slow 6,200 RPM. Torque is 600 pound-feet (813 Newton meters) at 5,000 revolutions. Compared to the 5.2-liter V10 in the Lamborghini Huracan Evo, the Viper’s engine has a redline of more than 2,000 revs lower. And lest we forget, the Viper engine was originally developed by Lamborghini in the 1980s. 10 cylinders, but two very different ways of using them to generate massive power.
That’s the focus of this video, by the way. It’s part of the Hoonigan Dinos Everything draw, where guesswork is made on the power output before the car does three pulls. Estimating an average driveline loss of 15 percent, the stock 640-hp Viper should show around 544 hp at the rear wheels. The owner of this car says the only upgrades are the exhaust system and engine tuning, so power should be at least slightly higher than normal. The big question is, how tall is it?
Of course, chassis dyno numbers can vary widely depending on the type of dyno used, the atmospheric conditions during the test such as temperature and humidity, and the information entered into the computer. Mistakes are of course possible, lest we forget an early Chevrolet Corvette C8 dyno test which showed much higher stats than expected.
For this session three guesses are offered ranging from 558 hp to 599 hp. The first two dynos put out 549 hp, but what about the third? Do you have any guesses as to whether the last pull was higher or lower? regardless, each person wins thanks to a V10 soundtrack that sounds as good now as it did back in 1992 when the Viper first launched.
Need more horsepower? See Rambling About Cars podcast with Ram TRX Havoc and others, available below.
