If you’ve ever wanted a Viper but found that car’s 50/50 weight distribution to be a little too perfect, then today’s Nice Price or No Dice SRT-10 Ram with its 56/44 balance might be your cup of crazy. Let’s see if its asking price is just as nuts.
Speaking of off balance, $43,000 for yesterday’s 2001 Ford Mustang Bullitt certainly seemed off-kilter to the vast majority of you. Nice as that pony was — and it did look pretty nice — it still landed a massive 88 percent No Dice loss.
Today we’re sticking with American performance, but wrapped in a whole different fashion with a completely different backstory. Let’s start off with Dodge introducing the Viper sports car in 1991. That two-seater terror carried as its centerpiece an aluminum 8.0-liter V10 engine that Chrysler built with the help of then-partner Lamborghini.
Not too long after the V10 Viper began giving drivers “code brown” alerts when the go pedal was pushed too hard, Dodge added a less powerful but potentially more durable cast iron V10 to its Ram truck line. It may not have been an Ozzy Osbourne-level craziness of the alloy engine, but it did offer class-leading power and towing.
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This 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 SRT-10 melds the Ram truck body with the bad-boy alloy Viper mill, making for what’s possibly the most fun you can have in a (truck) bed with your clothes on.
With the standard cab SRT-10 Ram, you don’t just get the 8.3-liter, 500 horsepower Viper engine. You also get a Tremec T-56 six-speed manual, handsome alloy wheels, and a wind tunnel-tested body kit that shows the truck means business. And what exactly is that business? Well, pretty much sucking down dead dinosaurs faster than they went extinct. The Ram SRT-10 in standard cab guise like this one was EPA-rated at nine miles to the gallon around town and only about five more per jug when heeding the call of the open road.
For people who are ok with funding super yachts for OPEC bigwigs, there’s a lot to like here. The Flame Red paint — which was second only to Black in popularity on this model — looks to be in excellent shape, and accents the clean and un-marred 10-spoke wheels adeptly. In the front, the headlamp lenses have been given a smoked appearance. That makes the truck look like it’s wearing sunglasses, as though it thinks it’s Jack Nicholson or something. The taillamps have had a similar treatment. All the trim and badging on the truck appears to be intact and there’s a ghostly Viper logo on the hood.
Oh, and before you ask, I think the color difference between the bodywork and the lower trim evidenced in the pictures is just a trick of the light.
According to the ad, there are 99,475 miles on the truck, however, the interior doesn’t seem to show those. An add-on A-pillar gauge, Viper-logo floor mats, and updated double-DIN stereo unit seem to be the only post-factory bits in here, too.
The ad doesn’t give us much to go on in regards to the truck’s mechanical condition, the seller choosing instead to just list its features. It is noted at the ad’s outset, though, that the truck comes with a clean title. That’s an important mention, as is the truck’s price tag, which comes in at $26,888. After yesterday’s nose-bleed-priced Mustang, that may feel like a bit of a palate cleanser for the bank account, but we’ll still have to judge whether or not it actually represents a good deal. Let’s do that right now.
What do you say? Is this Viper-powered Ram worth that $26,888 asking? Or, does that price feel like the seller’s trying to ram buyers another way?
Sacramento, California, Craigslist , or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Don R. for the hookup!
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