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My wife's uncle is a total car nut and he likes to street race. He lives in Houston, which IMHO, is home of one of the best street racing scenes in the country. He has a 1999 NA 911 and got tired of losing a high percentage of the cars he would run into so he decided to add a faster car to the collection. Last year he went out and bought a 2000 Viper GTS and took it to TNT motorsports. About $12K later he had a Le Mans wing, dual pop charger, headers, and full exhaust installed. He knows that I do a bunch of track driving and he has been for a ride with me in my Z so he wanted me to take him out in the Viper and see what I could do. 
All I can say is.... DAMN! He started the Viper and slowly backed it out of the garage. The car sounds MUCH tougher than stock Vipers. It does not have the lumpy idle that an old musclecar has, but it is similar in how you can feel it while you are standing a few feet away. The exhaust that he put on the car is really nice in that it is loud when idleing but REALLY loud when you rev the engine. I guess I am just used to my quiet TT w. Stillen exhaust but his car really gave me goose bumps. 
So I took a few snap shots while the car was warming up and then hopped in the drivers seat. The car is really easy to drive. The clutch is much easier than the one in my Z. I prefer a stiff clutch to an easy one so that is one thing that I would have to upgrade if it were my car. The shifter has a very long throw so that is something that I would change out as well. It is probably fine for most people but I really like the stiff clutch and crisp short throws that I have in my Z because it reminds me of the cars I drove at racing school. 
My Z is nice, and it turns a few heads, but you would not belive the attention a bright red Viper gets on the road. At every stop sign the people next to you give you a big thumbs up, oncoming traffic slows down to get a better look, a police officer even flagged us down so he could take a look at the car! It was crazy, I drove the car for about 2 hours and felt like a movie star the entire time. It was fun and a great ego boost but I don't know if I could handle that kind of attention all the time. 
OK, so on to my impressions. After the trip to TNT Motorsports the car has about 550 hp at the crank. I am really comfortable with the power my Z makes, 371 rwhp and 404 rwtq, so I was very excited to get the Viper out and see what it could do. We headed to a local toll way and he said, "Go for it, you can't break it, just don't wreck it!" So I decided I wanted to do some runs up and down the toll way and then make a bunch of u-turns to get a feel for how it handles. I was SHOCKED by how much torque that V-10 makes. The first time I got on it the 2-3 and 3-4 shifts really suprised me. I was so impressed with the power I had to keep telling myself two things. 1) I don't want to write my uncle a $90K check for crashing his car and 2) I can handle this car, I just need to warm up and get used to it first. 
After about 20 minutes of doing u-turns and running up through the gears I felt good and wanted to see if we could find anyone dumb enough to race us. It is not too hard finding people who want to see the Viper run. Every sports car on the road will run right up on your ass just to see you take off. We cruised on the toll way for a while and ran with a Firebird Formula and a Z-28 a few times, not even close. It was almost time for lunch with the family so we decided to turn around and head back. 
I exited the toll way and was making another u-turn. Just as I am about to get on the feeder a red Z-06 passes by and my uncle says "Go get him!" Being a good nephew I obliged. I got the car sideways in first gear, chirpped second and third, and ran up on the Vette at about 80. He saw me coming and slowed a little so I knew he wanted to run. We were on a deserted stretch of toll road and we had a 4 lane feeder in which to play so the conditions were perfect. We slowed to 60 and he gave me a thumbs up, three honks by me and we were off. He must have been totally stock because by the top of third I had about 2 car lengths on him, I shifted to fourth and ran up to about 145 and had him by 5-6 car lenghts, I took 5th to about 155 and it was all over. The Viper had lots more but I didn't care to push it much more than that. We rolled up to a light together and he rolled down the window. He said he was stock and had his car for about 6 months. He said he knew the Viper wasn't stock so don't even try... gave us a thumbs up and just rolled away from the light. I lit them up for first and second then cruised home. 
So needless to say I am ready for more power in the Z. I have never been in a Stage 10 Z car and I am really wanting to get a ride soon. Three guys I know have them here in Austin so I am going to see if I can get a ride soon so that I can compare the two. What do you guys think? What does a Z need to beat a Viper like this? Hopefully some TD-05s or the HKS turbos like Steamy has will do the trick!
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Check out what I drove on Thanksgiving!!! - 
09:50:42 11/26/01
