What has 10 cylinders and wants to eat your children? The 2013 SRT Viper. Well, probably. We won’t know for sure whether the Viper has 10 cylinders until it’s revealed to the public—and Chrysler has just announced that debut will take place at the 2012 New York auto show in April. Judging by this drawing, it will, once again, want to eat your children.
Aside from that, the image doesn’t indicate a whole lot: There’s a hood scoop—to which we respond “duh”—and very likely a set of LED-festooned headlights. Neither of these details are original ideas in car design, and that fact matters not in the slightest. What does matter is the voracious war criminal of an engine installed behind the hood scoop and headlights. We’re predicting a V-10 with at least 660 hp.
We also note that the Viper coupe’s double-bubble roof will return, although it appears to have been squared off for 2013. The same look was recently spotted on a pair of C7 Corvette prototypes. Coincidence? Absolutely. (A Viper roadster will follow the new coupe into production.)
If you’re confused about why we’re calling this car the SRT Viper and not the Dodge Viper, you can read about the decision to rebrand the reptillian beast. Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. We submit that a hulking muscle car by any other brand name will smell just as much like vaporized rubber. In other words, sweet.
Owners of third-gen Vipers also got good news, as a bolt-on Performance Upgrade Kit was announced for those cars’ stock V-10s. It combines new aluminum heads, a new upper intake manifold with enlarged throttle body, and new fuel rails to boost output by 150 hp. Good thing, we say, because we’d have become bored with our third-gen Viper’s paltry 500 horses years ago.
