One-of-None Off-Road Dodge Viper RT-10 Goes for First Drive, Cops Immediately Pull It Over

The monumentally outrageous Dodge Viper isn’t in production anymore (it was sacked seven years ago), and its legacy as a sportscar is now the stuff of legends, memories, and quirky builds. Simply and bluntly sincerely said, the Dodge Viper was – and still is – a so in-your-face car that it would be impossible to go unnoticed anywhere.

But, for some people, a plain, common, casual Viper (accepting that such a conceptual construct of thought can be a reality) just won’t do the job. One particular gearhead, seeing how his off-road ideas simply won’t cut it, decided to cut up something entirely different - a Dodge Viper, which he turned into a go-anywhere muscle overlander.

A rally Viper with a full 12 inches of suspension lift (that’s 30.5 centimeters, in case any metric curiosity about the Viper monstrosity arises), some serious off-road tires, and a list of mandated modifications to the underpinnings is the way to go. This isn’t a ‘Viper shell piggybacking a lifted truck frame’ type of scenario, but the actual morphology of a real-deal 8.0-liter V10 Mopar into an off-road performer.

Well, maybe performer wouldn’t exactly be the most accurate adjective in the dictionary since the Viper wasn’t particularly amazing across the board. Sure, it was an absolute titan when burnouts were the yardstick of motoring accomplishments, and its looks could trigger a cold fusion chain reaction between water and fire.

Mostly fire, since the apocalyptic Viper is mostly a powertrain of uncontrollable means mated to a stick shift that grinds six forward speeds and a pair of furnaces blazing down the sides of the two-seater. Add bespoke suspensions (front and rear), long=travel shocks, steel bumpers, and spare tires in the trunk, and the desert is its sandbox.

The builder is Matt Brown, an Automotive Engineer with a decade’s worth of expertise and experience in small enterprises such as Tesla, Apple, and NASCAR. He also video-logged his adventure and made it clear from the very inception of this project a year ago that he chose the Viper, with full knowledge of the car’s disappointingly long list of reasons against it being the bulletproof candidate for this project.

Small brakes, tiny radiator, plastic interior, attempted air conditioning, no roof, virtually no bending stiffness, pontoon-sized front and rear overhangs, thin-wall tube lightweight frame, no rollover protection, and the list could go on. Why should any of this deter Matt Brown’s plans to turn this pile of mechanical headaches into something no one has ever done before? ‘Making it go off-road just cranks that up to 11, maybe 12, possibly 13,’ is how he described the adventure.

Custom laser-cut front suspension with fabricated control upper and lower arms and uprights (box welded from steel) replaced the standard Viper setup. The rear was the tricky part: lifting the car resulted in positioning the drive shafts at the same level as the lower frame rail. To solve this, the builder cut that out and inserted gussets to reinforce the structure.

That solved only half the problem: the other part was to get the differential low enough to keep the half-shaft angles within a manageable range at full droop. The answer was a solid rear axle from a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Although, at some point during the Frankensteinization of the Dodge, the builder considered an eight-speed automatic transmission, it stuck to the classic six-speed manual. The shifter had to be modified with pretty much everything under the car, but the result is a Viper sitting on makeshift suspensions with a ride height that will make a RAM truck proud.

The first video below is the final stage of the build, with the magnificent engineering overkill end product rolling along under its power. 450 hp and 490 Nm (456 PS, 664 Nm) of ten-cylinder power, to be precise, all going to the rear wheels in a very un-off-roady manner. The entire story of this year-long project is documented in several YouTube episodes on Matt’s Brown Channel, ‘SuperfastMatt.’

Whether or not this unbelievably non-sensical build will get to successfully fail in an offroad adventure is a story for another time. Given how the engineer persisted in planning, fabricating, assembling, failing, and going back to the drawing board over and over during the last 12 months but also putting everything on YouTube, I’ll put my money where his ambitions are – in the dirt.

Oh, and if you need to be reminded about the nitpicking, nitty-gritty nail-biting details of an ongoing self-planned, self-executed custom project involving reciprocating pistons, gearboxes, suspensions, body panels, and everything in between, play the second video. It’s not a recap of the Off-Road Dodge Viper RT-10 saga but a mere refresher of memories for everyone who has ever undertaken a similar task of putting a never-thought-of twist to an equally mind-bending platform.

The Dr. Jekyll sportscar turned Mr. Hyde off-roader runs and drives - albeit it still needs some fine-tuning here and there - and it certainly drew attention during its maiden voyage (the drive up and down the street doesn't count as a proper test drive). Of all the people in the world, the one to come up to the driver and start asking questions had to be a police officer - who also happened to be a YouTube follower of Matt Brown and was just curious about the build.