SEMA vehicles are often the antithesis of function, being gussied-up show cars that focus less on performance than outrageous style and overwrought glitz. Dodge is bucking that trend with this car, a Viper concept that’s all about light weight, prodigious grip, and ultimate speed. Feast your carbon-fiber-hungry eyes on the Viper ACR. Going several steps beyond the also-track-focused TA, the Dodge Viper ACR concept is festooned in carbon-fiber aero tricks, from the front splitter and dive planes, to the gilled heat extractors above the front tires, to the giant “double-vector design” rear wing. The woven madness continues inside, where a gutted interior loses the stereo, sound-deadening material, and carpeting in the name of weight loss. Every bezel and surface that Dodge’s engineers could make out of carbon fiber is formed from the stuff, while faux suede wraps the steering wheel, shifter, and seats.
All that track-ready kit isn’t just for show. The ACR concept rolls on lightened 19-inch wheels (the production car has 19s on the back only) that frame platterlike, 15.4-inch carbon-ceramic two-piece rotors. The discs are clamped by six-piston Brembo calipers. Those big stoppers are cooled by new air ducts in the front fascia. Cooling air is routed to the rear diff by inlets located behind the windows, as in the regular Viper, but here the ductwork is exposed at either side of the trunk.
The ACR name has hallowed history in Moparland: The three letters first indicated a club-racer package on the Dodge Neon, originally offered only to SCCA members. Soon, the acronym package became available to the general public, denoting the hottest of Neons, before being applied to the last-generation Viper for a track-oriented scalpel that once held the street-legal lap record at the fabled Nürburgring. There hasn’t been a Viper ACR since the snake’s 2013 redesign. Does this concept signal another street-legal track beast? It looks that way—and it looks totally, venomously bad-ass.
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