This Brutish First-Gen Dodge Viper Is Our Weekend Want

We learnt this week that due to poor sales, SRT Viper production has been halted. This struck us as sad news, given that we're big Viper fans. We love the car's brutish charm, so decided to look for a good example of the first-generation Viper that kicked things off.

Early Vipers are disarmingly simple. The chassis is a steel frame, while the body is constructed from fibreglass. The gigantic 8.0-litre V10 under the bonnet had mostly been used in pickup trucks until it was slotted into the Viper, and even some of the suspension components were borrowed from Dodge pickups.

Thankfully, then-Chrysler owned Lamborghini was on hand to help redesign elements of the engine, which ended up with an aluminium block and head. This cut the sheer weight of the hulking 8.0-litre down to a more acceptable figure. It was still a basic thing, though, of a pushrod two-valve design.

It pushes out 400bhp, not a huge amount considering the size of the engine, but a potent figure nonetheless. 0-60mph takes 4 seconds dead, and it'll do 180mph. With the simple chassis and suspension, combined with the lack of anti-lock brakes and traction control, these are incredibly unsophisticated and wayward things to drive, but that's half the appeal, surely?

Vipers of any age are hard to come by in the UK: this 1994 model we've found is one of only a handful for sale in the country. Unsurprisingly, it's left-hand drive (all Vipers will be, unless converted after sale), and was imported from Canada in 2002. Incredibly, it has just 11,000 miles, which makes the £25,995 asking price pretty damn reasonable. Tempted? You should be.