In its final year, the Dodge Viper is going out on a high note as the car is sold out, Ralph Gilles, design chief for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said today at the Chicago auto show.
Gilles said he is sad to see the Viper go away. The car will stop production August 31. When Dodge announced in June that the car was going to be discontinued, it generated a flurry of final orders, enough that the automaker was worried it would not be able to fill them all, said Dodge brand chief Tim Kuniskis. “We had to shut orders for months and go back to suppliers to try to get more parts so we can fill them,” he said.
Dodge commemorated the final year with special editions that sold out within days. The models included 31 VooDoo II Edition ACRs, 25 Snakeskin Edition GTCs, 100 GTS-R Commemorative Edition ACRs, 28 of the 1:28 Edition ACRs, and 22 Dodge Dealer Edition ACRs.
In a wide-ranging look at FCA’s product push and industry trends, Gilles said there is more to come from Maserati—a brand his boss CEO Sergio Marchionne loves. The Levante quickly became the brand’s top-seller, but Gilles would not say if he is working on more utility vehicles.
And he appeared to tease the coming of the Fiat Toro small pickup when he showed the 2017 model and said “you’ll be seeing more of it.” The Toro is a unibody pickup designed for Brazil and based on the same platform as the Jeep Renegade and Compass. Talking to him afterwards, Gilles said he meant that Latin America would see more of the front- and all-wheel-drive pickup and additional products from the underpinnings.
Gilles is not ruling the idea out forever, but said there are no current plans to bring it here. Marchionne has said he wants a smaller pickup for the Ram brand, which could be unibody or body-on-frame. It would compete with the Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Toyota Tacoma, and the new Ford Ranger. At 193 inches long, the Toro might be too small for the U.S. market. In Brazil, it is sold with a 1.8-liter flex-fuel gasoline engine or a 2.0-liter turbodiesel with six-speed automatic and manual transmissions and a nine-speed automatic.
Speculation has mounted before, especially as the pickup has been spotted testing in Michigan, but many global vehicles are tested in the state that are not sold in this country.
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