Spotted on the road during SNOWMAGEDDON!!!

Ok, so my 35 mile drive took about 90 minutes this morning. The Benz was slipping and sliding, keeping me awake. Let me set the scene.....
I'm white-knuckling it, no lines/lanes visible, little order. Snow is flying, easily 4-5" on the ground in this region, 2" on the roadway. No salt trucks, no plows, a few cars in the ditch (south I-75), lotsa fun. So, I'm doing 35 mph or so and what passes me in the left lane? 2014 Viper with M-plates!! The most amazing thing? The car was facing the actual direction of travel too

Wow. I wanted to get a pic, but there was no way I was going to try to keep up with him and get my camera pointed at him.

A super secret double probation AWD version?

A car with real snow tires?

can you imagine the faces of the tire monkeys if you brought a Viper in and had them put "real" snow tires on it ... would love to have a video of that

Do they even make snow tires in the viper size? Aren't they like 20 inches wide in the rear?

wbjones wrote: can you imagine the faces of the tire monkeys if you brought a Viper in and had them put "real" snow tires on it ... would love to have a video of that

Some of the more hardcore Porsche guys will throw snows on their 911 Turbos and whatnot. Granted, they are AWD, but still.

I imagine a viper with snows would still be a handful.

Yeah, a Viper with snows would still be tough. They do have stability control now, but it's pretty track-oriented.

There is a great story from Way Back in the Day: when GM was developing the Toronado, Ford was playing around with a FWD Thunderbird concept too. Early one morning, a Senior GM Guy walked out his front door after a huge snowstorm and saw tire tracks from the driveway of his neighbour, the Senior Ford Guy. The tracks carved right through the snow, down Ford guy's driveway, up GM Guy's driveway, back down, and off to work. No fuss, no drama.

And let's give a shout out to the people who calibrated the Viper's stability control! (Yes, I know, real awful job, driving Vipers all day, but it looks like the mission was a brilliant success.)

Long long ago, there was a Lamborgini Countach that used to run around here on skinny snow tires during the winter.

BoostedBrandon wrote: Do they even make snow tires in the viper size? Aren't they like 20 inches wide in the rear?

You could convert the Viper to a dually setup, like those awesome old Auto Union hillclimbers.

I have studded snows at all for corners of my 924s. It is one of the best winter cars I have ever driven.

Stealthtercel wrote: And let's give a shout out to the people who calibrated the Viper's stability control! (Yes, I know, real awful job, driving Vipers all day, but it looks like the mission was a brilliant success.)

i will do that.

Duke wrote:

BoostedBrandon wrote: Do they even make snow tires in the viper size? Aren't they like 20 inches wide in the rear?

You could convert the Viper to a dually setup, like those awesome old Auto Union hillclimbers.

if you think putting snows on a viper would blow some minds.. putting FOUR snows on the back of a viper would really caused a vapour lock

AngryCorvair wrote:

Stealthtercel wrote: And let's give a shout out to the people who calibrated the Viper's stability control! (Yes, I know, real awful job, driving Vipers all day, but it looks like the mission was a brilliant success.)

i will do that.

Edited. PM'ing you.

Lemme guess, you were on 75 passing by Auburn hills I bet

Digging through Tire Rack, it looks like some Pilot Alpin PA4 245/(40F/50R)-18's would work on a '09 Viper.

fidelity101 wrote: Lemme guess, you were on 75 passing by Auburn hills I bet

yup. I can't believe the car was out at all. I was impressed.

that's pretty dang impressive. Lots of accidents on the freeways this morning.

I read this to my wife and she asked why in the world they would take that car out in a blizzard. Easy I said, you can run all of the low traction computer simulations in the world, but this is real world testing. A blizzard at 40 mph has to be the most challenging situation possible for that car. I bet the engineers are salivating to get data back from that run.

Ian F wrote: Digging through Tire Rack, it looks like some Pilot Alpin PA4 245/(40F/50R)-18's would work on a '09 Viper.

Not unless you shave the brakes down in the front and rear and find someone to make custom wheels and even then mine runs 345's in the rear not 245's. 245 snow tire on a viper would be instant death IMO.

I have trouble with mine in the rain on very good street tires, I could not even imagine snow.

I was doing similar low traction handling research with the FRS. Happy to report that there were no real issues. There are however, in my neighborhood streets, some circular tracks left in the snow reminiscent of crop circles. I deny any knowledge of how they came to be.

Easy, Yooper driver(most Yoopers are Nordic), or maybe just a good one from the west side of the state. Detroit doesn't get much snow. Growing up in the Jackson area, this stuff was every week, school only got canceled if the buses got stuck in the lot or it was so cold the diesel gelled up.

I'm guessing a Chrysler exec. or engineer took it home last night and HAD to return it this morning.

In reply to wearymicrobe:

I was going by the 18" OEM wheels and assuming a 18" wheel could replace the 19" wheel they list. Tire Rack shows 275's in the front and 315's in the rear. agree it would not be ideal.

...and now Tire Rack thinks I have a '09 Viper which makes browsing a bit of a pain...

dean1484 wrote: I have studded snows at all for corners of my 924s. It is one of the best winter cars I have ever driven.

I agree. The light weight and balance of a 924/944/968 makes it a great winter car.

The main difference here is that a Viper has 4.9 more liters of motor...