Original Dodge Viper Had BMW Headlights, Other Secrets Revealed

Roy Sjoberg, the engineer behind the Viper project, revealed some Viper facts on video.

Dodge Viper GTS front quarter shot

08:48

Jacob Oliva

By: Jacob Oliva

Apr 5, 2023 at 8:19pm ET

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It has been a while since Dodge made the last Viper. Born in the '90s, there are many facts about the model that we all should already know by now. Then again, the internet never fails to surprise us, such as this important bit of trivia shared by Roy Sjoberg himself through an interview with Four Eyes, a YouTuber and owner of a Dodge Viper GTS.

For the uninitiated, Sjoberg is the chief engineer of the original Viper team. In the video, the Four Eyes talked about some of the strange and impressive things he discovered about the early Vipers. He shared that the Viper's headlights came from BMW, which was backed up by a video interview with Sjoberg.

According to Sjoberg, the BMW Z1, which was never sold in the US, originally had those headlights, designed and developed by General Electric (GE) at its own cost. However, the German brand rejected them and went with a boxier style instead. And since BMW walked away from the program, GE was stuck with the tooling and headlight design.

BMW's loss became Chrysler's gain as the American company got the headlight system for free from GE, which saved the company millions of dollars on the Viper program. There were caveats, of course, such as the fact that the Viper engineers had to design the front bumper and hood around those lights.

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The Viper's headlights also had a unique feature, a protruding bulb filled with yellow fluid. This was actually a bubble level, which helped align the headlights during manufacturing. Removing the bubble would have cost a significant amount of money, so the Viper kept it.

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Four Eyes also talked about the lack of cup holders inside the Viper. Sjoberg explained that it was a statement by Chrysler and Lee Iacocca after receiving a "world-renowned cup holder award" from Road and Track for its minivan in 1993. Iacocca was practically insulted by this trivial recognition, which resulted in the removal of cup holders in the Viper.

There is much information on the Viper shared in the video above, so make sure to watch the whole thing.

Source: Four Eyes via YouTube

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