Dodge only made 22 ACR Dealer Edition Vipers before it stopped producing its legendary V10 sports car. This is one of them.
The 2019 Ram 1500 drives home a point that may be hard to believe: It’s been two model years since the last Dodge Vipers rolled out of the Conner Avenue Assembly Plant.
The car you see here is the fourth car in that 22-vehicle production run. It’ll be one of the many cars up for auction through Mecumin early August.
To commemorate the end of an automotive era, Dodge released five special editions of the 2017 Viper:
1:28 Edition ACR
GTS-R Commemorative Edition ACR
VoooDoo II Edition ACR
Snakeskin Edition GTC
Dodge Dealer Edition
The Dodge Viper ACR Dealer Edition was only available through the top two Viper dealers in the country: Tomball Dodge of Tomball, Texas, and Roanoke Dodge of Roanoke, Illinois. According to FCA, it featured a “Viper White exterior with Competition Blue center stripe, Adrenaline Red driver stripe, Carbon Ceramic brakes, Extreme Aero Package, [and an] ACR interior with red accent stitching.”
Given its rarity and significance in automotive history, the owners of this Dodge Viper ACR Dealer Edition were wise to have put only 11 miles on it. We have a feeling many of those miles were racked up driving the car from one storage location to another. It might as well be a 2019 model. The white paint is pristine and the giant carbon fiber wing gleams with newness.
The low-profile tires seem ready for fast driving, which the nearly factory-fresh 8.4-liter V10 and its 645 horses will provide. The black cockpit, equipped with a 12-speaker Harman Kardon audio system, is in equally great shape. It’s been occupied, but just barely.
A car like this poses a problem. It’s too much of a performance car to keep locked away, but too rare to put a load of road and track miles on. That makes us wonder: If you were the winning bidder for this Viper, what would you do with it?
Derek Shiekhi's father raised him on cars. As a boy, Derek accompanied his dad as he bought classics such as post-WWII GM trucks and early Ford Mustang convertibles.
After loving cars for years and getting a bachelor's degree in Business Management, Derek decided to get an associate degree in journalism. His networking put him in contact with the editor of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper, who hired him to write freelance about automotive culture and events in Austin, Texas in 2013. One particular story led to him getting a certificate for learning the foundations of road racing.
While watching TV with his parents one fateful evening, he saw a commercial that changed his life. In it, Jeep touted the Wrangler as the Texas Auto Writers Association's "SUV of Texas." Derek knew he had to join the organization if he was going to advance as an automotive writer. He joined the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) in 2014 and was fortunate to meet several nice people who connected him to the representatives of several automakers and the people who could give him access to press vehicles (the first one he ever got the keys to was a Lexus LX 570). He's now a regular at TAWA's two main events: the Texas Auto Roundup in the spring and the Texas Truck Rodeo in the fall.
Over the past several years, Derek has learned how to drive off-road in various four-wheel-drive SUVs (he even camped out for two nights in a Land Rover), and driven around various tracks in hot hatches, muscle cars, and exotics. Several of his pieces, including his article about the 2015 Ford F-150 being crowned TAWA's 2014 "Truck of Texas" and his review of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, have won awards in TAWA's annual Excellence in Craft Competition. Last year, his JK Forum profile of Wagonmaster, a business that restores Jeep Wagoneers, won prizes in TAWA’s signature writing contest and its pickup- and SUV-focused Texas Truck Invitational.
