Behind the Wheel | SRT Viper: The Viper Strikes Back

The best time was set by Mark Gillies, who was Car and Driver’s executive editor at the time, in a stock Dodge Viper ACR. The race organizers didn’t include the Viper in the original results because of a technicality involving its tires. But the fact is, a factory Viper — albeit the no-holds-barred ACR model — won the race.

And that’s the foremost thing you need to know about the Viper. It prioritizes speed, the ability to set the lowest lap times on any given track, above all else.

It doesn’t matter that you think its exhaust note sounds like a rutting water buffalo, or that its proportions recall the Duocar driven by Ace and Gary, the ambiguously gay superheroes of “Saturday Night Live.” The record shows that the Viper is the second-fastest production car ever to run around Germany’s famed Nürburgring. And it took the $845,000 Porsche 918 Spyder to dethrone it.

I drove the new 2013 SRT Viper, reborn after a three-year absence, on the road course at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research. Later, I tried a Viper GTS on the street.

The major difference is that the GTS includes a two-mode suspension (firm and firmer) and a more sophisticated stability-control system that will stay out of the way on a track while still providing a safety net.

The basic Viper, though, is tuned such that you can drive hard and never notice the stability-control intervention. If you do, you’ve really tempted fate.

While either Viper will get around a track with utmost haste, the 2014 model year brings a new track-oriented TA Special Edition Package whose performance claims include 278 pounds of aerodynamic downforce at 150 miles per hour, helping to glue the car to the pavement. The TA also has the largest tire-contact patch of any production car.

Beneath a carbon-fiber clamshell hood approximately a quarter-acre in size, the Viper’s 8.4-liter V10 now makes 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque — the highest torque rating of any naturally aspirated car engine. The Viper V10 doesn’t merely build power — it erupts.

In its trimmest form, the Viper weighs only 3,297 pounds, which means it has a power-to-weight ratio just this side of an Exocet missile. Top speed is 206 m.p.h.

The Viper will burn you — and not just figuratively. When changing gears, you’ll want to be careful not to let a finger stray down toward the metal shift lever, lest you wish you were wearing oven mitts. The rod protruding from the transmission tunnel may as well be Satan’s pitchfork bursting forth from the fiery bowels of Hades.

Likewise, you’ll want to carefully exit the car, particularly when wearing shorts, for the exhaust pipes below the doors are about as well insulated as a stilt bungalow in Bora Bora. I imagine that the Viper Club of America includes a lot of guys with missing patches of leg hair on their calves.

While many modern supercars don’t offer a manual transmission, the Viper doesn’t offer an automatic. Its V10 traces its roots to a Chrysler V8 introduced in 1964. The car is not sold in Europe, where the French translation of “Viper” is “Pourquoi?”

Other models from Chrysler’s high-performance SRT division are equipped with a 6.4-liter V8 that can deactivate half its cylinders for improved fuel economy. The Viper cares not for that trick, keeping all 10 cylinders thumping at all times. Gas mileage is consequently barbaric, with the Viper earning E.P.A. ratings of 12 miles per gallon in the city and 19 on the highway — a thirst that incurs a $2,600 gas-guzzler tax.

I tried the racetrack-ready launch-control function on the GTS, but the 355/30/19 rear tires lit up in such a huge burnout that I controlled future launches with my own two shoes on the clutch and throttle. The Viper still needs a third-party moderator, which is sort of nice when so many cars rely on their own internal algorithms to sanitize the dirty work of driving. The Viper’s a big dumb oaf, and it needs your help. Well, hallelujah.

During the drive at the North Carolina track, one Chrysler engineer lamented that the Viper would inevitably be compared to the new Corvette, even though the Viper is much faster, more expensive and comparatively rarer. “Soon you’re going to see those on every corner, but that won’t be the case with the Viper,” he said.

And while he’s right — with a base price of $101,990 and fewer than 29,000 cars built since 1992, Vipers will never overrun every Dairy Queen parking lot — it is still awfully tempting to compare America’s only two real serious sports cars.

So I have to wonder if the Viper’s glorious return is getting smothered by the debut of its fantastic new rival from Chevrolet, a hot car in its own right. Chrysler recently scaled back Viper production in the face of high dealer supplies, an ill omen for a brand-new car.

The difference between the Corvette and the Viper is that the ’Vette wants to be a new Ferrari, while the Viper wants to be a 1965 Shelby Cobra. Either that, or a big rock on a catapult. It hasn’t decided.

I don’t think Chevy really has to worry about the Viper. But Porsche might. The 2013 Viper, in perhaps its only subtle gesture ever, includes a miniature map of the Nürburgring molded into the rubber of the passenger-side coin holder. I don’t want to make any predictions, but if I were Porsche, I might not get too attached to that record lap time.