Ultimate Street Machine
by Ted Hlokoff
“Which car is the
A Sport Compact guy will answer with the name of his favorite SC. To a Musclecar guy, the answer is obviously a Musclecar. Everyone has a different Ultimate Street Machine.
My Ultimate Street Machine is the Supercharged Viper GTS I recently purchased back east in
Finally attaining a position in life where I could purchase nearly any car I wanted, I decided on a 2nd generation Viper GTS, but not just a Viper, a Supercharged Viper GTS. I watched ebay and constantly surfed autotrader.com for ‘the’ Viper of my dreams. I found 3, all back east and all Red with silver stripes.
Deana, my wife, and I flew to
A couple days before flying the owner of the Red ’99 Viper Venom 650R I had been dealing on for 2 weeks had convinced me that I didn’t want his car. It was in
In Ringgold the ACR made huge power, but ‘felt wrong’. It had aftermarket upholstery that was falling off the dash. The car had a shimmy that got worse after 70mph and the hood didn’t fit properly so I decided that was not the car for me. I test drove a ’96 Viper GTS that ran perfect, had awe inspiring power delivery that made my soul sing, but it had 51,000miles on the odometer. I offered $8,000 less than the asking price and was refused. I wasn’t hurt by this as my back-up plan was to buy the Pekin Viper. Another day of Kia driving and I test drove the first Viper I looked at. The smart way to test drive a car with over 500hp is for the owner to drive it, and then try it myself and that’s how we did it. Being unused to that much power I slid sideways on the freeway entrance ramp at 90mph … as I passed a cop driving down the freeway. I pulled onto the freeway and drove the speed limit. The car ran great, and I eventually did get the speedo past 130mph. The power delivery was nearly identical to the ’96 at Ringgold. It took about 4 hours for paperwork, a trip to his bank, insurance and documentation. Deana sat quietly in the Kia, which I hated, the entire time. Jeff, the owner, offered drinks and she declined. I explained to Jeff that my wife wasn’t into the “car thing” at all and she was fine. He told me that he was impressed because his wife had never even deigned to sit in either of his Vipers.
I took Deana along on this 6,500mi. Trip as kind of a holiday (for me). On the 3,200mi. trip home we were forced to stay ahead of the approaching storms expected back east and didn’t have much time for her favorite pastime, shopping. The few stops we did make she hardly bought anything owing to the small volume of trunk space in the Viper. Although she did mention a few times that her Escape does have much more “shopping space”. I countered in what I considered to be the winning argument, “But the Viper gets better mileage than your car.” She mentioned once or twice that the Viper had no cup-holders.
In
We outran the storms and had mostly sunny days of driving, at least until William’s
It was great to get into the Stealth and feel the 500 horses accelerate all 4 tires and rocket down the snow covered road the next day. Already, I was missing that adrenalin rush.
For most of us cost is one of the most important considerations for their Ultimate, ergo – no Viper.
To many of us “hardcore” guys it’s the hands-on part that makes our Ultimate. For us, the factory stuff just didn’t make it, although a few efforts came close. For us, the Ultimate is one that we fixed. Drivelines, power-trains, suspensions and bodies – nothing is sacred, at least until after we’ve fixed it. Whatever it is that we’re doing, be assured that once we’re satisfied, it’s our Ultimate.
The
Like most things in the world the cliché, “To each his own” is the best description for the Ultimate Street Machine.
Hi! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d
ask. Would you be interested iin exchanging links or maybe guest writying a blog
articlle or vice-versa? My website addresses a lot of the
same topics as yours and I believe we could greatly benefit from each other.
If you are interested feel free too shoot mee an email.
I look forward to hearing from you! Excellent blog by
the way!