With the announcement of the death of the Dodge Viper next year, many Viper fans are placing their orders for a brand new 2017 unit before it’s too late. Back in June, Dodge announced they would build five different special edition Vipers (206 cars in total) to celebrate its last year of production. Like we figured, those special edition units would sell fast. In fact, two of those special editions (totaling 59 cars) sold out in the first two hours! Within five days, the rest of them were spoken for.

Since the special editions are all sold out, Dodge has another fantastic way to order a special Viper. With their “Exclusively Yours: Viper 1 of 1 Program” they started in 2015, you can truly build the Viper of your dreams. For a starting US MSRP in the mid $90k USD range, the Viper GTC features all the content of the GT model and adds the complete ability to customize a one-of-one design, a personalized instrument panel badge, Concierge Service and Viper Ambassador Owner’s Portal with exclusive content to track the build of the car.

With 8,000 exterior color options, 24,000 custom stripe colors, 8 wheel options, 16 interior trims and 9 option packages, there are more than 25 million ways for buyers to fully customize their one-of-a-kind Viper. If you can dream it, Dodge can and will build it. Once you have chosen everything and the car has been ordered, you can then follow your Viper throughout the build process via online updates from your personal Viper Concierge.  Get behind-the-scenes photos and stories as well as messages from Dodge executives, designers and engineers.

Pat Flaherty from Edgewater, Maryland, is not only a diehard Mopar guy but a modern muscle fanatic as well. When the Challenger was released back in 2008, Pat ordered a brand new Hemi Orange SRT right away. Same goes for the Shelby Mustang and Camaro; when they were released, Pat went out and ordered them. In fact, at one time his driveway used to house all three! When he found out the Viper was being discontinued, he took it as his opportunity to finally order one. “Being as this is the last year for the Viper, I placed an order for the car. I was only five years old when you could order a new 1969 Daytona Charger. Forty-eight years later I’ll get my winged Dodge,” says Pat.

Pat decided to start his order with a 2017 Viper ACR-E (E being Extreme Aero) model and go from there. Pat says he plans on taking the car to a few track day events every year so the ACR-E was a natural choice. However, he didn’t want the full race spec interior that comes standard in that model. “I like the 1-of-1 program because it allowed me to take a full-on race car with a license plate but have the interior creature comforts of a GTS Viper,” Pat shares.

At the beginning of September, the updates started coming in from Dodge just as promised. The first batch of pictures included shots of the car being given its bold white stripes and then being sprayed in a stunning coat of deep metallic blue. From there, he continued to receive pictures from every step of the build. From the go-kart like chassis being assembled to the rich Sepia interior being installed, Dodge covered all of the bases with keeping Pat in the loop.

Finally on October 10^th, Pat received the notice and pictures of his Viper going through the rigorous testing and quality control process. Once the factory tested all of the electrical systems, they sent the car into the water box where it sat for a full five minutes and had 700 gallons of water sprayed onto it to make sure there wasn’t a single leak! From there it headed over to a four-post shaker rig where it shook and bounced the car around to make sure not a single squeak or rattle was found. After that, it was robotically checked for proper fitment and gaps of the panels before heading into the “prep and polish” area for that final showroom quality detail.

On October 20^th, Pat arrived at the Conner Avenue Assembly Plant in Detroit and once he got his full factory tour, he headed off for home in his brand new Viper.

“The experience from the very beginning of ordering the Viper from a friend who owns a Dodge dealership, to working with the factory and concierge service was absolutely awesome. The list of the pros is long and consist of, weekly updates of the status of the car pre-build, along with weekly photographs of the car once the build starts. The concierge service answers every question within just a few hours by either a phone message or email which is a factory direct portal messaging system which is where they send you pictures and are stored for future excess. There is not another automobile manufacturer that offers the same service!”

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