2006 Dodge Viper NOT SELLING TOO WELL

Chris Vander Doelen, Windsor StarPublished CONNOR AVENUE- - There is good news and bad news about the Dodge Viper, the bad boy sports car launched a decade ago to revive the working man's brand.

The bad news is, the 2006 Viper is not selling. Dealer inventory is so high, the Detroit plant that builds the high-powered sports car will be laid off for the rest of the year after their summer shutdown ends later this month.

A spokesman for DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. confirmed the the Detroit layoffs for me last week.

Connor Avenue Assembly in Detroit, where the cars are hand-built on an assembly line that is only 700 feet long (Windsor's minivan assembly line is over 10 km long) hand builds only 11 Vipers a day.

But inventories before the shutdown were said to be in the hundreds -- in the neighbourhood of 800 vehicles, according to some people who work in the plant, via a third party. The good news is, Dodge is working on a new Viper, and I have it on very good authority that the brand managers intend the new version of the car to make a forceful statement to re-establish its supremacy in the horsepower wars.

When the Viper came out 13 years ago, progenitor Bob Lutz decreed that it have 500 horsepower -- an almost unheard of quantity of power at the time. It was the most brutal package of violent acceleration available on the market.

But the competition has caught up during the intervening years.

A number of Mercedes-Benzes, Corvettes, BMWs and even a Ford Mustang now boasts 500 horses or more.

The new Viper will have at least 600 horsepower, my sources say. Through the miracle of variable valve timing, it may even have 650 horses -- and still be emissions compliant.

I had no accurate information about which model year the new car will be, but pilots are already being built.