Viper ACR Wrecks Shop with 1500HP

The Legend

The Dodge Viper has been immortalized throughout nearly all its production life as the untamable beast. Originally designed as a performance car for the 1991 model year, it lacked many of the creature comforts like lock cylinders and climate control. The large-diameter wheels made room for massive brake assemblies, and there was originally a canvas top with Wrangler-style zippers; the car was built to run hard! It was also designed without airbags, which would eventually help seal its fate. 

[Photos courtesy of Nth Moto]

The Nth Methodology

Nth Moto is a Minneapolis-based performance shop that specializes in ultra-high-performance racing and fabrication works; they routinely service and modify Lamborghinis, Ford GTs, and anything else with a prohibitive price tag and a tenacious street attitude. They pride themselves on their non-production build methodology - no two Nth Moto cars are ever alike. They take the input of their customers on an individual basis and use that to custom-tailor their next build.

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The Flagship

Nth Moto didn't get into business by being all about words - it takes more than words to acclimate owners to the idea of letting these guys prod around in their Vipers' internals, looking for performance gains. They needed to prove their tuning methodologies worked. What better way than to have the first fifth-gen viper to hit 200-plus in a half-mile pull? Seems reasonable, right? After all, it is a Viper!

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The Conquest

Unveiled at the New York Auto Show in 2013, the fifth-gen was a very promising machine. The all-aluminum, 8.4L, 640hp V-10 was ready to twist up the driveline in a tornado of overperformance whenever you felt like mashing your foot into the floorboard. As it sat, the Viper already had more than enough power...to most. Nth Moto is not of the "most" category, however. Although the maximum performance spec sheet outlined a 200mph-plus top speed, seeing that performance top out within the span of a half-mile was something unheard of. Target set.

[Photo courtesy of Andrew Wheeler]

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The Weapon

A closer inspection reveals just how different the Nth gen-five Viper is compared to its progenitor. The average person may look at it and see different color valve covers, the carbon fiber X-brace, and pick out a few other minute details that indicate a high-performance mill (as if the Viper wasn't "high-performance" already). But it takes a trained eye to "see" what you really can't see. The Mth Moto Viper is no ordinary viper; craftily concealed beneath that harmless plastic induction cover hides a sinister secret...the gen-five Viper is turbocharged - twice! By implementing a proprietary twin-turbocharger setup, Nth has effectively doubled the power output of their fifth-gen Viper.  

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The Shootout

The team has been tuning and "racing" exotics long enough to have a good handle on things. Here, they use an airfield as they battle it out against the clock in a very-similar gen-four viper. Arduous testing follows extraneous research and development; it may seem like a lot of fun from the outside (which the team won't deny they're all having on track day), but everyone is here to do a job! Can Nth Moto get a fifth-gen Viper to hit 200mph on a quarter-mile run on 19" wheels?

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Heaven's Landing

The only way to really see what cars like this can do is to take them where they can be opened wide up, in a straight line, for a long time. Heaven's Landing (ICAO identifier: GE99) is the airfield in Clayton, Georgia that provided the perfect setting to test the mettle of the pilot. The Nth Moto team would finally find out if they could push their fifth-gen Viper up into the 200mph-threshold. 

[Photo courtesy of 1320 Video]

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Just The Tip

The Viper battles it out with a variety of other high-performance machines throughout the day in their respective lanes. All of the other participants are lucky this is only a time trial. If it was any kind of race, it wouldn't have been much of a competition! The Viper's launches are highly unstable; you can literally watch the epic struggle between traction management and unruly horsepower ride a fine line until the Viper digs in. Pass after pass, coming closer and closer to the 200mph-mark.

[Photo courtesy of 1320 Video]

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The Verdict

After plenty of hard pulls - and lightning-fast passes - the Viper pulls around to grab the time slip from a track staff member - 200.5mph! They literally hit their mark - within one half of a mile per hour! The Viper pulls back around to the lot and celebrates with the team! There are plenty of congratulations to go around, even by strangers. It was well-known what the Nth Moto team was trying to do here today, and even those that weren't actively rooting for them wanted to see the 200mph-barrier penetrated - even if only by a half-mile per hour!

[Photo courtesy of 1320 Video]

>>Join the conversation about this 1500HP Viper ACR right here in Dodgeforum.com.

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