Turns out there are some downsides to off-roading a Dodge Viper – Jalopnik

There will always be something special about driving a purpose-built sports car as it was intended, but there’s also something incredibly fun about using a car for the opposite of its intended purpose. I mean, did I have a blast driving a Mazda Miata through the Malibu canyons? Absolute. Did I have a different kind of fun driving a regular Honda Civic on the same roads? You bet I did. So when we first saw the off-road Viper, of course I got excited. But would you believe me if I told you that there are also some disadvantages to off-roading a Dodge Viper?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to take the word of a largely irrelevant car blogger about it – not when we’ve got a new video from our old friend SuperfastMatt to talk all about it. As the owner and builder of the off-road Viper, he probably knows a thing or two about off-roading his own Viper, and overall he says, “It’s awesome. Most of all, it’s awesome.” On the other hand, that statement is also immediately followed by the caveat: “The stuff I’ve done to it is great. All that Dodge stuff? Not so great.”

Yeah… that’s to be expected. Even by Dodge standards, the early Vipers were a master class at cutting corners. As SuperfastMatt put it, “Dodge made this without any budget. The parts are cheap, the development was rushed, and the durability testing was minimal. So it’s clearly not going to be the best car for tearing up washed-out dirt roads or making or doing donuts in the sand. It has limitations, and I’m finding them all.”

That may not be the best thing for Matt personally, but it does provide great content for us, the viewers.

The hood problem also led to some cracking in the paint, although upon further investigation this may not have been Dodge’s fault. It appears that the front fender, where the cracks are worst, was probably repainted at some point with paint that matched the car’s original color, but was never intended to be used on a part that flexes as much as a body panel. Oh well.

There were plenty of other smaller issues to fix as well, from leaking hoses to the lack of a cup holder, but the real fun starts when you get to the part where he decides to swap the stock radio for an aftermarket Apple CarPlay unit. Stripping an entire interior still counts as ‘fun’ these days, right? And how else are you going to clean up all the dust from your previous off-road adventures without stripping the entire interior? And once everything is out, why not trade a few parts you don’t like for something better?

The best part, though, is probably when he accidentally breaks one of the tabs on a headlight switch. That’s because upon closer inspection it turns out to be a Ford brand switch. Presumably Dodge couldn’t even be bothered to go with the unbranded version, so it just bought the version the supplier was already making in bulk for Ford. That’s a bit of a cutback.