For nearly three decades, a Dodge Viper perched atop a Kentucky dealership’s sign has been an odd, lofty monument to Mopar muscle and marketing art. But now, the red roadster has returned to earth. The V10 sports car’s tires only touched air once in 28 years, and that was for a refresh 15 years ago.
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“This girl is getting a refresh,” wrote Audubon Chrysler, based in Henderson, in a Facebook post. “If you see the Viper coming down today, it’s to be cleaned and repainted! We assure you the Viper will soon be back up high!”
Photos of this second-generation Viper RT/10 (produced from 1996 to 2002) adapting to life at a lower altitude in the Audubon parking lot serve as a reminder of why most people with nice cars don’t leave them outside, even in states with milder weather conditions.
The red paint, baked by years of summer sun, has dulled, the clear coat appears to be peeling, the headlight lenses have turned green, and the black plastic side windows are covered in a thick layer of algae.
We don’t get to peek inside this 1996 Viper to see how well those 1950s-style windows kept the weather out, although we suspect it’s pretty musty in there. But we do get to see under the clamshell hood, which appears to have been home to Henderson-area birds and their nests.
A large amount of straw behind the Viper’s front wheels suggests birds have been crawling in through the front vent to seek shelter from the elements and predators, and the V10 engine is covered in a nasty-looking brown gunk.
But the fact that it has an engine may surprise some, who might assume this Viper is just a hollow shell, the kind that movie producers create by dressing up a wrecked car so they don’t have to spend money blowing up a real one.
Some commenters on Facebook asserted that this must be a pre-production Viper that Chrysler no longer needed, but couldn’t legally register for road use. But Alec Girvin shot down those rumors. He says he works at the dealership, that the car was brand new when it first went up in 1996, and that it had only 12 miles on the odometer.
At the time, it still wore its original wheels, likely replaced with the popular chrome alloys when it was last refreshed 15 years ago.
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